CLA Reachhttp://blog.lib.umn.edu/clareach/stories/
The magazine of the College of Liberal Arts.enCopyright 2014Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:40:09 -0600http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.31-enhttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
9701=Alumni|36278=Animating the liberal arts|18304=arts|10068=Awards|33631=Bound to Please|36282=Bound to please|38723=Bound to Please|40244=Bound to Please|37459=Bound to please|39621=Bound to please|29815=Bound to Please|37543=Bound to please sublist|36288=Catch an arts event up close|36281=Conducting peace|36385=Conducting Peace Sublist|37748=Dean|39631=Dean|17853=Dean|40243=Dean|38721=Dean|29814=Departments|33630=Departments|10074=Donors|33634=Donors|37541=Donors|29627=donors|39622=Donors|17732=Environmental Perspectives|24760=Faculty and Staff|9698=Faculty Notes|17854=Faculty Notes|17600=Faculty Notes|39538=Faculty Notes Sublist|17594=Fall 2006|36111=Fall 2011|17725=Featured Discoveries|39597=Features|17595=Features|10071=Features|33629=Features|29811=Features|38725=Features|40149=Field of inquiry|37458=Field of inquiry|10069=Field of Inquiry|36279=Field of inquiry|39598=Field of inquiry|17598=Field of Inquiry|38722=Field of inquiry|38728=For the love of learning|39635=For the Love of Learning|40152=For the love of learning|36286=For the love of learning|17597=From the Dean|10072=Full Circle|17599=Full Circle|9702=Giving|17601=Giving|36280=Going places|17729=Health & Society|36287=How do you animate the liberal arts?|37535=Liberal arts and STEM|37536=Liberal arts and STEM sublist|24761=Margin of Excellence|39620=On a personal note|37460=On a personal note|36284=On a personal note|24757=On a Personal Note|33633=On a Personal Note|29623=On a Personal Note|40245=On a personal note|38726=On a personal note|9700=Outreach|38729=Photo feature|9699=Research|39484=Research Sublist|29608=Spring 2010|33628=Spring 2011|17097=SpringSummer2007|9942=Student (Graduate)|9943=Student (Undergraduate)|40241=Student stories|29844=Sub-Bound to Please|33632=Sub-Bound to Please|33635=Sub-Features|29840=Subfeatures|18392=Subfeatures|10167=Subfeatures 2|37457=Summer 2012|37747=Summer 2013|24753=Summer2009|36285=The lives they led|40240=The lives they led|37461=The lives they led|38727=The lives they led|39629=The lives they led|36283=There when the troops come home|29615=Undergraduate Education|40148=Winter 2014|17098=Winter2008|22148=Winter2009|38720=Winter2012|24762=You Are Invited|
Visionaries: Reframing our Worldhttp://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=417530
417530

Some say we live in an Age of Irony--when it's hip to be cynical, cool to mock dreamers, and many of our popular movies are apocalyptic. One wonders where such a downward-spiraling perspective could possibly lead a nation and a world.

But we see things differently at CLA. We have plenty of reasons to nurture positive perspectives, and among them are our 1,500 graduate students.

Extraordinarily bright, and partnering with faculty who are among the best in the world in their respective fields, these scholars are up-and-coming thought-leaders, researchers, teachers, artists, business and political leaders--creators of the future.

Today, as they pursue master's and doctoral degrees, CLA grad students are tackling such important issues of our time as climate change, human rights, immigration, water scarcity, and mental health.

What I hope you'll notice as you read about them in this issue of Reach is how optimistic they are, how they are meticulously constructing their arguments and projects--based on knowledge of their disciplines, fueled by imagination and good will.

They believe that what they are learning and creating here at CLA can help them make the world a better place, and they are building their professional lives on that commitment.

We celebrate them because they will prove the cynics wrong, because they are the leaders our world needs now. They are visionaries.

"I am not a criminal," said the woman Luz Hernandez was interviewing. "I did not rob anyone or kill anyone. I was working and that's not a crime. Why call me a criminal?"

After federal officials arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers at a Postville, Iowa, meatpacking plant in 2008, Hernandez, a doctoral student of linguistics, worked with a response team to assist the detainees. She interviewed many who were later deported to Guatemala and Mexico, and some mothers with dependent children who were allowed to remain in the United States.

She is now incorporating that experience into her doctoral research by analyzing interviews she has conducted with women from the raid.

"Looking at how they perceive and explain what happened to them, we can see how the women felt when the raid occurred," Hernandez says. "We can learn how they perceive the immigration system that criminalized them and the linguistics they use to interpret their situations.

"They don't see themselves as victims; they feel they were fighting each day to provide for their families in a foreign culture," Hernandez says.

The linguistic analysis will tell Hernandez many things about ideology, gender, social structures and beliefs, which may be helpful to advocacy groups working with immigrants or officials seeking the perspective of those arrested.

"Using linguistics to investigate social issues can help us examine the relationship between power and the powerless," says Hernandez, who has two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree from Mexico's Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla.

Working in the University of Minnesota's small but internationally known Hispanic linguistics program, Hernandez says she hopes to finish her doctoral work in 2014, then get a job doing research and teaching at a college or university.

- Joe Kimball

This version corrects the school from which Luz Hernandez earned her bachelor's and master's degrees, which was listed incorrectly in the print version. We regret the error.

40149
Tue, 04 Mar 2014 12:48:20 -0600On a Personal Note

What do CLA grads do with their liberal arts degrees? Lately we've heard from business executives and attorneys, teachers and diplomats novelists--and even a chocolatier. Be sure to tell your friends and offspring that liberal arts graduates have the widest possible range of career options!

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=415091
415091

1960s - 70s

Bud Philbrook

Bud Philbrook, B.A. '69, political science; M.A. '81, public affairs; J.D., Hamline University; was named Ambassador for Peace by the International Institute for Peace Therough Tourism. He is CEO and cofounder with his wife, Michele Gran, of Minnesota-based Global Volunteers, a nonprofit which over 30 years has engaged more than 30,000 volunteers to serve in 32 countries on 6 continents. A project in St. Lucia, for example, pairs largely North American volunteers with local people on the Caribbean island to help at-risk children and their families improve their health, nutrition, and education. The organization consults with the United Nations and partners with UNICEF and the World Food Programme. Philbrook is a former deputy under-secretary at the United States Department of Agriculture, a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and former assistant commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
Learn more about Global Volunteers at z.umn.edu/philbrook.

Wendy Wildung, B.A. '76, journalism, a partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, Minneapolis, was named one of 2013's Top 250 Women in Litigation by Benchmark Litigation. Wildung handles business disputes, focusing on securities litigation and publicly held companies.

Lynn Kremer, B.A. '76, German; B.F.A. '77 theater; M.F.A. theater; was appointed the Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J., Chair in the Humanities at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass. The Jakarta Post called her production of Shackled Spirits, about mental illness, the best performance at the 35th Bali Arts Festival.

Alan Abramson

Alan Abramson, Ph.D. '77, sociology, received the CIO of the Year Career Achievement Award from The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. Abramson is CIO at HealthPartners.

Mary Leonard, B.E.S. '76; B.S. '79, hospitality and food service management; is CEO and chocolatier at Chocolat Céleste in Saint Paul. She was recently featured in Condé Nast Traveler.

Judith A. Moen

Judith A. Moen, B.A. '77, journalism, formerly a TV journalist in Chicago and Atlanta, and on the Travel Channel, now advocates for people with disabilities. Find her blog, Everyone's Included -- stories that embrace the joy and power of people with disabilities, at z.umn.edu/everyonesincluded.

1980s

Patrick Mendis, M.A. '87, public affairs; '90 Ph.D., geography; recently published Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order. Mendis lives in Reston, Va.

Thomas Wallrich, B.A. '87, international relations; J.D. '90; joined the Cozen O'Connor's law firm as managing partner at its Minneapolis office. He has been named a "Super Lawyer" by Thomson Reuters for 15 consecutive years.

Maria SchniderPhoto by Jimmy and Dena Katz

From Winter Morning Walks by Ted Kooser

How important it must beto someonethat I am alive, and walking,and that I have writtenthese poems.

This morning the sun stoodright at the end of the roadand waited for me.

Maria Schneider, B.M. '83; M.M. '85, Eastman School of Music; scored big at the 2014 Grammy Awards, where her album, Winter Morning Walks, took top prizes in four classical music categories.

The album's title work is a song cycle Schneider composed based on the poetry of poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ted Kooser and featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Also included is Schneider's "Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories," performed by Upshaw and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The album won for best contemporary classical composition, best classical vocal solo performance, best engineered classical album, and best classical producer of the year (David Frost).

Well known for 20 years as a jazz composer, arranger, and big-band leader, Schneider won previous Grammys -- for large jazz ensemble recording and instrumental jazz composition. In 2010, 2011, and 2012 she was named Best Jazz Composer and Best Arranger in the Annual DownBeat International Annual Critics Poll. Time magazine said, "To call Schneider the most important woman in jazz is missing the point two ways. She is a major composer -- period."

It was Upshaw, an artistic partner of the SPCO, who drew Schneider into the classical world, commissioning her to compose for vocalist and chamber orchestra.

The women, both breast cancer survivors, felt a special connection with Kooser's poems, which he wrote on pre-dawn walks in the Nebraska countryside as he himself was fighting cancer.

"We think we understand our faith or our sense of beginning and ending, but it's not till a moment like that that you find out what you really feel," Schneider said in an NPR interview. "And everything in life becomes heightened -- especially things in the natural world -- beautiful things like light and the sound of those birds, or whatever. It overtakes you with a sense of appreciation and love and beauty."

1990s - 2000s

Anna Cianciolo

Anna Cianciolo, M.A. '97, psychology; Ph.D. '01, engineering psychology,
Georgia Institute of Technology; is the new editor-in-chief for Teaching and Learning in Medicine, an international journal. She was the founder of Command Performance Research, Inc., Champaign, Ill., which developed officer and leader education for the United States Army.

Kelly Olmstead, B.A. '01, psychology; J.D. '05; was elected vice president of the Ramsey County Bar Association, and will be the organization's president in 2015-2016.

Aaron Karger, B.A. '02, speech communication, is an associate attorney at Kalis & Kleiman, Davie, Fla., working in commercial and real property litigation and criminal defense. He was previously an assistant state attorney with the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office; he has a background in real estate development.

Erdem Durgunoglu, B.A. '02, history and global studies; M.A. '12, anthropology, San Francisco State University; received a Fulbright Award to study and write a book about Turkish butchery practices and the Turkish slow-food movement in Turkey.

Nadia Hasan, B.A. '02, English, J.D. '06; is a partner at the Cozen O'Connor law firm, at its new Minneapolis location.

Julie M. Limoges, B.A. '02, political science, Spanish and Portuguese; M.A., international development, American University; is a United States Foreign Service officer serving as the economic/commercial officer for Somalia at the United States embassy in Kenya. She recently hosted an event with the Minneapolis Somali community.

Ted Weber, B.S. '04, child psychology, represents Renosol Corporation in the Milwaukee area, at New Tech Sales, a family business that works with industrial, agricultural, construction and military companies.

Jon M. Brovold, B.A. '05, English, is a senior analyst in product safety and quality assurance for Target. He is currently working toward an M.B.A. at Concordia University.

Amanda Coplin, M.F.A. '06, creative writing, won the Whiting Writers award, which is given annually to 10 writers who show exceptional talent and promise in early career. Her debut novel, The Orchardist, received much recognition. Coplin lives in Provincetown, Mass.

George Fiddler, B.A. '08, cinema & media culture studies is an account director for social and emerging media at Olson ad agency in Minneapolis. He creates consumer campaigns and social media strategies for Fortune 500 companies and local non-profit organizations.

Shezanne Cassim

Shezanne Cassim, B.A. '06, political science, was freed on January 9 from a maximum security prison in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, having been arrested there in April 2013 for posting a humorous YouTube video about local youth rap culture.
A business consultant to PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Dubai, Cassim was charged with endangering the nation's national security by violating its federal cybercrimes law. His release was supported by the United States Department of State and public officials including Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Al Franken, and Congresswoman Betty McCollum, and by American comedians including Will Ferrell. Advocating on his behalf, Barbara Frey, director of CLA's Human Rights Program, called Cassim's detention "unwarranted and lengthy" and said she was troubled by his limited
access to an attorney. Cassim's case was widely covered in the national news. He was interviewed on CNN after his release: z.umn.edu/cassim

2010s

Ko, third from right, in a scene from Dear White People

Naomi Ko, B.A. '11, art history and English, is making her screen debut in a principal role (Sungmi) in Dear White People, an indie film that received positive reviews when it premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. A satire about being a black face in a white place, the film was shot this summer on the University's Minneapolis campus. Ko has acted in productions at Mixed Blood Theatre and Theatre in the Round, and in two plays she co-wrote, which were produced by New Age Salon and Bedlam Theater. She is currently working on a comedy show and a novel.

Regan Sieck, B.S. '12, sociology, is a program associate at BestPrep, a Minneapolis nonprofit that prepares students in grades 4 through12 with business, career, and financial literacy skills through hands-on experiences.

If you like to read and explore what's new in books, you may already be on Goodreads.com, the social networking site about books. Reach is on Goodreads, and we'd love to have you join us. Find our Reach Magazine group to check out the latest books by CLA authors.z.umn.edu/goodreads

Nonfiction

The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo: A Child, an Elder & the Light from an Ancient Sky

Kent Nerburn

New World Library, 2013 / While "Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians" may sound like the invention of a perfervid novelist, it was a real institution established by Congress in 1898 in Canton, South Dakota, that, among other things, straitjacketed children, locked them in subterranean holes, shackled adults to pipes, beds, and radiators and forced them to lie in their own excrement. It was demolished in 1927, determined to have largely imprisoned Native Americans who were misunderstood or otherwise economically or politically inconvenient. The asylum is one of two realities that ground the final volume of Kent Nerburn's Neither Dog Nor Wolf trilogy, the other being, by contrast, a memoirist storyline that compels readers to reconsider their relationship with Earth. It's Nerburn's story of tracing, on behalf of her older brother, the fate of Yellow Bird, a young Dakota girl lost to the asylum many years ago. It's also a story of spiritual enlightenment: Nerburn's experience stepping out of the mathematically matrixed Western understanding of the world onto the Native American path of acutely listening to what the trees, birds, frogs, buffalo -- and our own dreams -- have to teach us.

Kent Nerburn, B.A. '68, American Studies; Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union
and University of California, is the author of 13 books and a two-time winner of
the Minnesota Book Award. Reviewer Mary Pattock is the editor of Reach.

Caring Democracy : Markets , Equality, and Justice

Joan C. Tronto

NYU Press, 2013 / Brilliant, profound, and provocative are the adjectives that came to mind as I read -- and kept underlining as I read -- Professor Joan Tronto's new book. It is brilliant in examining the question of care in all its aspects and complexity. Who needs it, who gives it, and who or what is cared for or about is her subject. Her argument that everyone requires care in different ways and at different times but that too many get "passes" from responsibility for providing it is well documented and a challenge to policy makers. Her profound analysis of public education is only one of her examples of care in a democracy.
We can't have equality if we value everything in market terms and thus devalue care work is her provocative conclusion. If we truly believe in democracy, we must take into account our needs for care, but this will not be simple. It will require that those who provide care and those who receive it be heard. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in politics or public policy.

Tronto is chair of the Department of Political Science. Reviewer Arvonne Fraser, B.A. '48, political science, served from 1992 to 1994 as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Five Billion Years of Solitude

Lee Billings

Penguin Group, 2013 / Finding life on another planet would be the greatest discovery in human history. But beyond sci-fi fantasies of aliens swooping in to say hello, how do scientists actually locate distant worlds that could harbor life? Five Billion Years of Solitude, by Lee Billings, provides the answers. Billings covers everything from the formation of the young earth to the impending death of our solar system, and the book does an especially good job of balancing human details (e.g., about the ego-driven early days of planet-hunting in the 1990s) with big, oh-wow ideas about, say, interplanetary communication and exploration. (If you like to jot notes in the margins, be prepared to make some big exclamation points.) Above all, the book examines whether or not Earth -- and by extension, human civilization -- is special. Does intelligent life exist elsewhere, or are we alone in the cosmos? No matter the answer, Billings's multi-billion-year story proves what a special moment we're living through right now -- the first potential peek at life among the stars.

Lee Billings, B.A. '03, journalism, is a freelance science journalist. He lives in New York City. Reviewer Sam Kean, B.A. '02, English and physics, is the author of the bestselling The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist's Thumb.

Leaving Rollingstone: A Memoir

Kevin Fenton

Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2013 / Kevin Fenton's first book was the award-winning 2011 novel Merit Badges, which shares with this new memoir a setting (1970s southeastern Minnesota), a few key plot points, and a theme of wholeness splintering. But rather than diving into his tale of growing up near Winona and losing his father too early (as the novel does), Leaving Rollingstone interrogates the story. What was the context for the family exuberance he remembers before his dad's death? In what ways did his mother carry them all on her back? What pleasures and friends and mentors laid the groundwork for the place of sobriety and joyful work he finally built so many years later? Fenton telescopes in and out of eloquently described memories, enjoying the opportunity memoir offers to reflect, to reconsider, to re-envision the story he has told himself. He takes a treasured vision--what it was to feel effortlessly at home in the world--and peels back nostalgia to present a harder truth: how much effort went into that feeling. There's beauty in the complexity.

Ready for Air

Kate Hopper

University of Minnesota Press, 2013 / For every human being on this earth, there is a birth story. And for every baby born, a mother is born as well. Kate Hopper the mother was dragged into motherhood unexpectedly early by severe preeclampsia. She has written an emotionally honest and genuine account of her daughter Stella's birth at 32 weeks. Instead of being able to take their daughter home shortly after she was born, Kate and her husband had to leave her for weeks in the NICU, a world of beeping alarms, helplessness, fear, and frustration. While this is a birth story, it's a human story as well, not neatly tied with pink and blue bows. In this new world of motherhood Kate must deal with self-doubt, disappointment, trepidation, and isolation, but also triumph and a new ferocious love. Among other classes that Hopper teaches, she teaches women to write their own birth stories and memoirs.

Kate Hopper, M.F.A. '05, creative writing, has taught literature and creative writing at the CLA, The Loft Literary Center, writing workshops across the country, and online. She is the recipient of, among other awards, a Fulbright grant. Reviewer Colleen Ware, B.A. '91, English, is CLA's web editor.

Fiction

The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

Ethan Rutherford

Ecco, 2013 / Ethan Rutherford's debut collection of stories covers a wild range of subjects: Confederate soldiers testing a primitive submarine (that's the "coffin" of the title); 1912 Russian sailors braving Arctic ice; two 11-year-old boys exploring friendship in 1980s Seattle; a camp director describing a disastrous summer. What unites them, beyond Rutherford's uncanny ability to build believable worlds (whether contemporary, historical, or sci-fi), is the captivating tone, which steers a line between droll deadpan and desperation (with the occasional full-on foray into one or the other). The stories often feature groups of men/boys wielding projectiles -- bored and uneasy as they wait for the opportunity to use
them, distressed and excited when the time comes. Rutherford makes the reader feel for them as fragile creatures even as they clumsily destroy environments, people, themselves. Most are foot soldiers, not "deciders" in these skirmishes, but Rutherford doesn't let them off the hook; although his plots compel, this bright book's message is not inevitability but a bemused insistence that other, less damaging courses of action are available to us all.

When I found Iris Perez sitting stiff and upright on the toilet in her tiny apartment's closet-sized bathroom it had to be 89 degrees inside. Her eyes were open -- petrified, faded from river-stone-gray to tarnished-stainless-steel, and her body was darkening, as if the color in her iris had leaked into her bloodstream, pigmenting her withered skin. Iris's mouth gaped;

Death seemed to have wrenched open her jaw with both hands, shoving his bony arm down her throat to drag the soul from her chest. The top and bottom halves of her jaw twisted in contrasting directions, like her nose and chin had tried to escape simultaneously, ultimately choosing opposing routes.

A good three minutes passed before I pulled my eyes from her expression of unrelenting horror, and I did so to peer over my shoulder and ensure Death had not lingered to take another.

Luz, the social worker for our elderly housing building, called to me from the apartment's entrance. I headed back down the hall, trying to muster as somber an expression as I could. Luz teetered within the threshold, exactly where I'd left her. Our eyes met; I clenched my teeth and shook my head.

"She's dead," I told her. The words came out a near whisper; somewhere in my subconscious I didn't want Iris to hear me, in case she hadn't realized.

"What? Are you sure?" Luz fell against the doorjamb, then quickly straightened. "How do you know?"

I had heard these questions the month before when I found Carlos Martinez sprawled on his living room floor, his signature red baseball cap pulled just over his eyes, as if he'd been prepared for death. Luz had even offered an equal level of disbelief when I'd told her about the tenant who'd thrown himself from his eighth-floor balcony.

"But ... did he die?" she had asked.

"It was the eighth floor," I had repeated.

This time I skipped straight to the answer that always satisfied her incredulity. "Take a look."
I waived a hand, inviting her into Iris's apartment.

Luz examined the doorway and shook her head.

"I've never seen anything so dead," I assured her. I headed back inside to turn the air conditioner on. Then, I called 911.

_________________________________________

When we'd find our tenants' corpses locked up in their apartments, it was always stiflingly humid inside, as if their souls, having escaped through their open mouths, crashed into the popcorn ceiling like helium balloons, and burst into a billion heat particles, leaving behind a cold, stiff shell, and a sour funk. The smell wasn't decay; they usually weren't dead that long. That is, the odor wasn't directly from the decaying of a dead body, more from the gradual decaying of a live one. It was the smell of neglect, and the heat only amplified the stench. Opening the doors to those apartments was like peeling back the rubber cover off sealed Tupperware after you'd forgotten your lunch in the trunk of your car.

Sometimes the smell escaped through the space underneath the door and traveled down
the narrow hall toward the elevator. Sometimes it boarded the elevator and spread throughout all 10 floors of Council Towers elderly housing complex. Each time, the smell beckoned for attention. Most times, it was too late.

_________________________________________

Luz had long abandoned the scene when police officers began arriving, about 20 minutes after I made the call. The first, a stocky uniformed patrolman entered, talking on his cell. He followed my nod down the hall towards the bathroom, without pausing his conversation.

Jonathan Escoffery, M.F.A. candidate in creative writing, is supported by a U of M Diversity of Views and Experiences (DOVE) Fellowship.

"Yeah, come on over," he spoke into the phone's receiver, before peeking in, scrunching his face, then heading back down the hall. "I'll be here." A smile briefly washed the disgust from his lips, then he snapped shut the phone, and began trading a series of numbers with the dispatcher chirping from his radio. When the volley ended, he turned his attention on me.

"What's your name again?" he asked, pen and pad poised. We were somewhere between "I'm just the Admin," and "because the neighbor smelled something 'iffy,'" when a busty patrolwoman walked in, and the policeman lost interest in his questions and my answers. A young detective in a dress shirt and tie showed up a few minutes later. By then, cops one and two were comfortably seated at the dining table, deeply engaged in station gossip.

The patrolman stood to join the detective, and I could see his pit-stains were joined by a damp, oval blot on the back of his navy-blue shirt. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve, and moved to lower the thermostat another several degrees.

"They don't like the cold," my property manager used to tell me. "Their blood is thinner. Or maybe it's their bones. I always forget." One thing was certain: this had to be more warm bodies than Iris's apartment had seen in years, and the A/C unit, perhaps for lack of use, struggled to drop the room temperature.

I leaned against the kitchenette counter, listening as the policemen discussed how long Iris could have been sitting there atop the toilet. They rotated in and out of the tiny space, taking turns examining her. The policewoman remained quietly seated, elbow on table, palm bent under chin.

"Couldn't have been more than a few hours," the patrolman said.

"I don't know. She's pretty stiff already."

"The rigor mortis sets in like that, though." The rebuttal came with an enthusiastic snap.

"Really?" the detective asked.

It's like they're discussing car parts, I thought. Or something they saw on Animal Planet.
I imagined the officers swigging beers between pokes and prods of her flesh. Iris, who silently dragged her flesh through the halls, day after day, solemn and solitary, to the cafeteria and back, reserved even in movement, had become spectacle, had become a lesson.

The detective returned from the bathroom and said, "Yeah, she's pretty dead, I think.
What do you usually do in this situation?"

"Call you," I said.

"Shouldn't you call her family?"

"That," I informed him, "would also be your job."

I flipped open Iris's file. Her Emergency Contact listed a nephew's out-of-state phone number and a document certifying that she had donated her body to the University of Miami's medical school for research.

I shifted my eyes from the file to the detective, who had begun crawling beneath the glass dining table, presumably searching for clues. This is her family, I thought -- the playschool detective and the couple patrolling for love. With her body going to UM, this is her wake.

I noticed the policewoman peering in my direction, and it wasn't until she mouthed the word "pretty" that I realized she wasn't staring at me. I followed her gaze to a large portrait of Iris hanging on the living-room wall. Within the sharp contours of her face her olive skin held no wrinkles, and her pink, plump lips brimmed with vitality.

Her eyes weren't gray, according to the portrait. They were blue.

From all fours, the detective said, "I wouldn't have pegged her for a blonde."

For the briefest moment, we took her in, silent. Maybe this gathering is what Iris would have wanted. She was finally getting her attention. Maybe she turned off the air so that we could find her quicker. Maybe this was her last call for company.

Jonathan Escoffery is an M.F.A. candidate in the creative writing program and an instructor in the Department of English. He is the fiction editor of dislocate magazine, has published his work in Interrobang?!, The Coffin Factory, Radioactive Moat Press, Sliver of Stone Magazine, and elsewhere, and is currently working on a novel. "Finding Iris" was first published in Foundling Review.

No surprise that it's challenging to get water to residents of a country that is 75 percent desert. But in Jordan, one of the world's most waterscarce countries, the problem is exacerbated by a history of regional political instability, corruption, and refugees in the hundreds of thousands pouring over the borders over the past 60 years from Palestine, Iraq, and most recently Syria.

Jordan is where Basil Mahayni, Ph.D. student in geography, is conducting both academic and policy research, hoping to connect them in ways that can help water management systems better meet community needs, especially those of the poor and middle classes, in water-starved countries.

He's stationed in Jordan's capital city of Amman, a city of some 2 million people, where, every week, water is piped in rationed amounts across miles of hilly terrain into rooftop tanks atop homes and apartment buildings. It is then up to residents to monitor their use of the precious resource -- meaning that midweek a mom may need to curtail her family's laundry or daily bathing.

Amman's water system is a public-private amalgam, run by a government-owned company; while it is technologically competent, it struggles to provide some important features associated with government, especially regulatory power and mechanisms for public input and accountability.

It's ridden, Mahayni says, with political tensions, as it tries to keep in balance urban and rural needs, higher demand, rising costs, and limited water supplies. Stark disparities persist. For example, he points out, authorities have provided educational programs in public schools and poor neighborhoods to teach children to be good stewards of water, even providing them with citations to issue to parents when they appear to be wasting water, even as some wealthier households cultivate extravagant gardens, and farmers enjoy access to highly subsidized water.

Technology is not enough

Basil Mahayni, Ph.D. student in geography, is supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Arab Council for Social Sciences, and the U of M's Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change/McArthur, Consortium on Law and Values, and Office of International Programs. Advisor: Abdi Samatar

His dissertation still a few months in the offing, Mahayni nonetheless has come to some conclusions based on his studies and on interviews with officials from Jordan, USAID and private sector consultants, and with residents from around the city. He believes water management and distribution will remain a crisis in countries such as Jordan as long as water policy is framed as a technical -- but apolitical -- project. "For management to be both fair and effective," he says, "you have to have genuine understanding of what's happening in terms of daily realities of communities, and provide genuine avenues for participation."

Mahayni thinks his use of several methodologies, including content and policy analysis, geographic information systems (GIS), and interviews, is part of what has attracted support from the National Science Foundation, the Arab Council for Social Sciences, and the University's Office of International Programs.

"I've received really good training in Minnesota," he says. "Abdi (Samatar), my adviser, is
a model in being able to converse with policy makers in very genuine ways. I would like to take this training in geography and bring it into conversation with policy people, perhaps in organizations like the UN or good research institutes involved with environmental policy."

Waleed Mahdi isn't your average film buff. Over the last five years, the American Studies Ph.D. candidate has watched more than 500 films made in the United States and Egypt, searching for clues about how the two societies view Arab Americans. "Films have the power both to reflect and to shape popular perceptions," Mahdi explains. "They reveal a lot about how societies view each other -- and themselves."

Raised in Yemen during the escalating anti-American protests of the 1990s, Mahdi spent his youth perplexed by the intensity of the U.S.-Arab conflict. His chance to seek answers came via a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of New Mexico, where he earned his M.A. in U.S.-Mideast cultural politics in 2008. Upon beginning his doctoral studies in Minnesota, he opted to focus on cinematic portrayals of this country's 3.5 million Arab Americans.

The pictures he's discovered aren't pretty. U.S.-Arab hostility made its way to the screen early in the history of cinema, but not until the last century's final decades did Arab Americans become a target for slurs and suspicion. Egyptian and Hollywood film producers still feel the political winds of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, observes Mahdi, and the chill is evident in their work. "Neither group of film producers seems interested in creating an authentic portrait of the Arab American," says Mahdi. "They're mostly interested in depicting him/her as the 'cultural other' " -- an outcast whose imagined deficiencies are invoked to confirm each group's sense of superiority.

Waleed Mahdi, Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, is supported by U of M fellowships from the International Center for the Study of Global Change, Department of American Studies, Immigration History Research Center, and the Graduate School. Advisor: Roderick FergusonPhoto by Lisa Miller

"Look at the typical Hollywood movie," suggests Mahdi. "It presents the Arab-American male as a foreigner living on American soil, speaking with a heavy accent, displaying distinctive physical features -- almost always a beard. He's engaged in national networks of terrorism. He doesn't care about the lives of women or children. He's ready to die for a cause that's somewhere in his head."

And the Egyptian film? "It focuses on questions of loyalty," Mahdi responds. "It depicts the Arab American either as someone who is still connected to his cultural roots, still speaks Arabic, still values Arabic codes of honor and still is critical of American foreign policy -- or as a totally Americanized person who doesn't care about anything Arab or Islamic, who doesn't care about his community, his relatives or his religion. He worships the dollar, and feels total allegiance to American foreign policy."

These one-dimensional characterizations serve as ammunition in a war of "mutual vilification," Mahdi says -- a competition waged at the expense of a common scapegoat. And though each movie-making camp paints the Arab American with its own brand of tar, both groups ultimately send the same message. Says Mahdi: "The point is straightforward. 'You are either with us or against us. You can't be both Arab and American.' "

Millions of Arab Americans insist that they are both -- and can't help but be. Mahdi takes heart in the emergence of a post-9/11 generation of Arab American filmmakers eager to portray the genuine complexity of Arab Americans and to push back against the misrepresentations of past decades. The films produced so far skip polemics in favor of poignant humor. Among Mahdi's favorites is Cherien Dabis's Amreeka, a 2009 award-winner depicting the heterogeneity of an Arab-American family.

The timing of this new cinematic wave is encouraging for Mahdi, who sees self-representation as the only avenue to accurate portrayal of the diverse Arab American community. "Finally," he says, "it's possible to see films depicting Arab Americans as they really are: People of many nationalities and religions who sought refuge in this country because it values equality and diversity. People who might very well be willing to criticize U.S. foreign policy, but who would never act to undermine the security of the country they call home. Their story is actually a very American story."

At first, the two Ph.D. students couldn't believe what the data told them: when companies in countries with high levels of theft added extra security guards, theft actually increased.

David Perez-Reyna and Enoch Hill had worked together two full years on an econometric model that was now yielding counterintuitive, even absurd-sounding, results.

Perez-Reyna is from Colombia, and Hill worked in Guatemala before graduate school. Having witnessed theft problems firsthand in those countries, where armed guards patrol nearly every business and ride along on most delivery trucks, they persisted in their work.
"We found that our initial perception was correct: if there's a lot of theft, then companies are driven to hire more security," says Hill.

"But the amount of theft kept growing even when companies were spending more on private security," Perez-Reyna explains. "So we realized there had to be another factor."

Deeper into their research, the model indicated yet another apparent anomaly: even when a country spends more money on public law enforcement, it doesn't necessarily help the overall economy. At least, not immediately.

"If a country moves a little in spending more on law enforcement, it's not a good investment," Hill says. "Poorer countries are actually worse off when they spend just a little more. The overall costs to the economy aren't recovered because they have to hire more police and build more prisons, and there will be fewer workers when more people are put in prison. Plus, the chances of getting caught remain relatively low, so not much deterrence occurs for potential thieves."

They found that it's not until law enforcement spending reaches a medium level that the graph starts turning positive. As enforcement increases, there is greater deterrence, and consequently less incarceration, thus putting less indirect pressure on the economy.

That discovery helped Perez-Reyna and Hill explain the huge variations in theft among
countries that invest in law enforcement at different levels, such as Somalia versus Guatemala versus the United States. Spending a lot more really does matter, they're finding.

Their finding flew in the face of an economic rule of thumb: effects of an economic event are greatest at the outset, and diminish gradually after that.

"Usually in [economic changes], the greatest gains come in the early stages, but not here," Hill says.

Implications for public policy
Top scholars both -- Hill* had the best academic record of any student in his first-year grad school class, and Perez-Reyna* was tied for second -- they have been fast friends for three years. Sharing an office in the economics department at Hanson Hall, they work together on research studies and play soccer on the weekends.

Ph.D. candidates in economics: David Perez-Reyna (left)* is supported by a Central* Bank of Colombia fellowship, and Enoch Hill* by a U of M Silverman Fellowship.

Their eyes light up and they finish each other's sentences as they discuss their research model, "Public Law Enforcement: More is Not Always Better," which Perez-Reyna presented in October 2013 at a national conference in St. Louis, Mo. It involved crunching six years of data gathered by a World Bank survey of 100 countries. About 400 companies in each country answered questions about theft and their security costs.

The model, which Hill and Perez-Reyna have updated with new data at least 10 times already, includes a look at the relationship between a firm's size and its security costs. Not surprisingly, bigger firms experienced more theft and therefore hired more guards.

Their professor, Timothy Kehoe, a prominent economist and adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, praised the project. While the two students still have work to do, he says, their project has the potential to provide valuable guidance on what levels of law enforcement are cost-effective in various business and civic scenarios.

Was it unusual for economics students to work on what, on the surface, seems to be a
law-enforcement project?

"Economics, at its basic level," Hill explains, "is about how to make choices under scarcity." That means the principles of economics can be applied to any type of supply problem, even the cost of security to deter theft at manufacturing plants around the world. "Everything we've done is related to optimizing resources," he says.

Furthermore, their work has focused on macro-forces in the marketplace -- an economics issue -- rather than on specific firms or countries experiencing security problems.

Individual cases are difficult to model, Hill says. "So much is seemingly random and there's no way to capture all the factors. But across thousands of firms, you can see a pattern and write equations about what a bunch of people are likely to do."

Those patterns have helped Hill and Perez- Reyna reach some macro-conclusions on the
problem in less developed areas.

For example: "The biggest cost of theft isn't actually the theft; you have to waste so much on employees standing around with a gun and not working," says Hill. "And if people steal a lot, it lowers the wages for everyone and there's even more incentive to steal."

"But in an economy with less theft, the wages tend to be higher and there's actually less
incentive to steal," adds Perez-Reyna.

Their hope is to fine-tune the model such that it will be useful to planners. Says Hill, "Someone working on public policy might look at our paper and consider implementing it in their country."

Joe Kimball, a former columnist and reporter for the Star Tribune, now writes for MinnPost.com. He is the author of the bestselling Secrets of the Congdon Mansion.

This article includes a number of corrections from the print version. Corrections are indicated with an asterisk. (*) We regret the errors.

Here's a puzzle: Since schizophrenia is highly heritable, and since those who suffer it have low reproductive success, why hasn't its prevalence diminished over time? That's what evolutionary theory suggests should occur. Yet this debilitating mental illness appears to have afflicted human beings for millennia and persists at an unwavering rate of about one percent worldwide. How can this be?

Rachael Grazioplene, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, has an answer: "It seems that schizophrenia, like bipolar disorder, is a secondary consequence of genes that also produce positive human traits," she says. "In healthy individuals, these genes are linked to enhanced creativity. This suggests that the same biological underpinnings that cause delusions in some people give rise to ingenuity in others."

There's plenty of evidence to back up that idea, Grazioplene says, including a 2011 study from Sweden of 300,000 people with serious mental illness. The findings show that healthy siblings of people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are especially likely to work in creative occupations. This could explain how genes linked to schizophrenia persist across generations. While psychosis minimizes opportunities to procreate, creativity most likely increases both survival and reproductive prospects.

Yet what, exactly, does creativity have in common with psychosis -- besides a smattering
of special genes? Just how are the people who occupy these two very different "camps of perception" alike? Grazioplene's doctoral work in the psychology department's Personality, Individual Differences, and Behavioral Genetics program seeks answers to these questions both in terms of behavior and the brain.

Making sense of experience
Describing the shared behavior is easy: both groups show a high propensity to perceive unrelated details as meaningfully connected, a tendency called apophenia. A byproduct of the brain's programming to make sense of experience, this phenomenon touches all of us in some way: "This is what's happening when you hear your name called out in a noisy crowd," Grazioplene says, "or see the face of Jesus in a pancake."

Apophenia is an expression of the personality trait known as "openness to experience," which describes the general tendency to be imaginative, curious and intellectual. People who rank very high for apophenia and openness are prone to fantasy, says Grazioplene, and have difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality. "They tend to hyperassociate, to see meaning at levels most people don't detect. In itself, this isn't a negative thing. At optimal levels, some of the cognitive processes that lead to disorganized thought may actually be beneficial. Part of what makes people brilliant is that ability to make unlikely connections."

Are these shared behavior characteristics detectible in the brain? There's reason to think so. "If we're right that creativity arises from the same genes that cause psychotic illness," says Grazioplene, "we'd expect to see not only that the personality traits linked to these genes are similar, but that the associated brain structure will be shared as well."

That's just what the early research seems to show. Grazioplene's research with advisor Colin DeYoung shows that people who rank high for apophenia /openness have more diffusely connected white matter -- the stuff that makes up the cerebral wiring system -- in specific brain regions. Interestingly, the patterns they've discovered resemble those found by other researchers in the brains of people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Executive control
That's not the end of the story, though. In addition to identifying similarities between creative individuals and people with psychosis, Grazioplene is keen to understand the differences.

"There's this great study showing that successful artists are as high as schizophrenics on these measures of unusual thought processes and strange experiences," says Grazioplene, "but that they don't have any of these more negative symptoms such as cognitive disorganization, confusion, flattened emotional affect, anxiety. What it suggests to me is that while there are certain shared network properties between schizophrenia and creative artistic professions, there are other divergent characteristics."

One thing that appears to dampen vulnerability to psychosis is intelligence: "It seems to have a modulating effect on apophenia," says Grazioplene. "In order to usefully engage the hyper-associative process, you have to have the top-down executive control to choose among all these alternatives to identify what's actually meaningful and which things are by chance."

Discovering such protective factors is Grazioplene's ultimate goal. She's seeking them by studying personality findings and brain images from 300 subjects, none of whom has been diagnosed with psychotic-spectrum disorders. Studying normal individuals, she hopes, will shed light on the question that interests her most: "What is it about the brains of healthy people with very high apophenia that protects them from developing the disorganizing symptoms of, for example, schizophrenia?"

In it for the long haul
This is the sort of question that can take a lifetime to answer, but Grazioplene seems to be in for the long haul. "Many people wonder if there's a strict level -- an identifiable point -- at which a person becomes a schizophrenic," she notes. "What we're finding from the biology is that the answer is no. The biology of the brain is showing us that there is a very gradual curve between normal and abnormal for these illnesses."

For Grazioplene, the notion that the liability for psychotic spectrum disorders is spread throughout the population raises a profound question: how does this liability actually play out at the neurobiological level? Ultimately, she says, "understanding the neural mechanisms that create resilience, despite the presence of high risk, is a very important goal in the understanding and treatment of these illnesses."

In the meantime, Grazioplene says, it may make sense to view disorders of perception in more nuanced terms. "Stories of mental health and illness are really never a matter of a few straightforward cause-and-effect circumstances," she says. "There are no simple answers."

Kate Stanley, B.A. '80, journalism, writes about law, medicine, social policy and global affairs. She was previously a member of theStar Tribune editorial board, and as an undergraduate was editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Daily.

Like Medieval astronomers, today's mathematicians select certain models over others. Shay Logan, doctoral student of philosophy, studies how mathematics communities determine which formulas are valuable. "When mathematicians reflect on their discipline, they look to philosophers," he says. "If philosophers ignore the fact that good math models reality, then mathematicians also ignore that."

Logan's goal is to help scholars achieve results that have real-world meaning. His dissertation, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, provides recommendations for selecting theorems that accurately represent the phenomena they try to explain. "My work introduces vocabulary that makes distinctions between what makes good mathematics models and ones that aren't worth pursuing," he says. Logan's research could aid professors in training students to make better theoretical decisions. It could also provide funding agencies with tools to determine which studies merit grants.

This issue of Reach provides a glimpse into the research and creativity of CLA graduate students across an array of fields -- from French language and literature to economics, music, geography, psychology, sociology, American studies, and creative writing. Their stories demonstrate how crucially important graduate education is for the development of new knowledge and imagination to propel the liberal arts to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

When we rightly speak of the inestimable value of the liberal arts to students and, in turn, to society, we often have in mind the virtues of an undergraduate liberal arts education. But in order to fully appreciate the vital role of the liberal arts, we must also recognize how intellectual inquiry and expression deepen in insight and grow in relevance at the graduate level. For it is frequently the case that graduate students push the frontiers of knowledge and creativity with research that blazes new trails and opens new vistas. Since the liberal arts do not remain static, but instead evolve around an enduring core, the world depends on the research and creative work of each new generation to set the framework of changing knowledge, and pass that knowledge on to the succeeding generation.

We take pride in the exceptionally high quality of our College of Liberal Arts graduate programs, and especially in the innovative research and creative work of our graduate students. After reading the stories here, which illustrate the larger contributions, you will likely
share our excitement about the accomplishments of CLA graduate students.

This is the last issue of Reach to appear under the gifted editorial hand of Mary Pattock, as she moves into retirement. Mary has transformed Reach, establishing it as a prize-winning magazine widely recognized as exemplary in its artful and readerly representation of CLA. We will miss Mary's graceful and insightful leadership of the magazine, and we wish her the best in retirement. Please join me in thanking Mary heartily for her making Reach such a magnificent journal.

Dear readers,

For five and a half years I have taken both pleasure and pride in creating this showcase for the brilliant and oh-so-relevant research and creative activity that takes place at CLA and that informs our instructional and service missions. I hope you have enjoyed reading our stories as much as I have enjoyed presenting them to you.

Now I am retiring from the University, and looking forward to a chapter of more leisurely freelance and creative writing.

There will not be another issue of Reach this year, which is, as you know, a time of transition between deans; the college will let you know about the future of the magazine for the long term.

Thank you for being the readership half of this magazine equation; thanks to those who sent us news and comments, and who shared the magazine and its stories with others.

Thanks most of all for your continuing, loyal, support of the College of Liberal Arts.

Gulu village, Uganda: A young woman studies the war-to-peace mural on the wall of the football stadium.

For two decades, Northern Ugandans lived a real-life horror story. Conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army and the government ravaged their districts, displacing whole villages and forcing children to become soldiers or sex slaves.

Now, three hard-hit villages are rebuilding -- goat by goat, loan by loan and flour sack by flour sack -- using strategies that also help restore shattered relationships.

One contribution to that effort came from Shannon Golden, a Ph.D. sociology student. The villagers, notwithstanding their trauma, had opened their homes and painful personal stories for her research into the conflict's impact on relationships that cement community cohesion.

Golden felt obliged to give something back.

"I realized how much I had taken from this exchange," she says. "I was getting material for my dissertation, and that was going to jump-start my career."

Thus began the quest for a thank-you gift.

"A great gesture"
That humane response reflected a central point of Golden's research: informal personal interactions are important factors in rebuilding war-torn communities.

"You can't just think about truth commissions or trials or all of these other rebuilding programs," Golden says. "You also have to think about the role of people's every day interactions ... about the ways that those interactions can be resources in the resettlement process."

From a Ugandan perspective, it "was a great gesture," says Lominda Afedraru, a Kampala-based journalist whose family roots are in the Gulu district where Golden did her field research. "People come to do their research, and after getting whatever material they want, they usually go away. This was unique."

The district's devastation was almost beyond comprehension, Afredraru says. "For a long time, these people were homeless, living in camps with terrible trauma. Their lives were miserable."

Death rates ran high in the camps, and children were often victims.

Two paths converged Golden's connection with Ugandans began in 2004 with a six-month internship in that East African nation while she was an undergraduate at Wheaton College. Africa grew on her, and over the years she found herself returning to pitch in on social service work.

Advancing to graduate school, she took an interest in how communities make the transition from war to peace.

"My two paths converged at that point, and Northern Uganda became my dissertation focus," she says.

In January 2011 she launched field research in three recently resettled Ugandan villages, observing daily interactions and interviewing residents.

"Everything was still in a state of flux," Golden says. Families were struggling to socialize young people whose perspectives had been framed by mass violence. Neighbors who had suffered the atrocities of war needed to rebuild the trust necessary for social stability. There were disputes over land ownership, which would be a significant factor in determining who had power and standing in the villages. And there were questions about whether the formal, international mechanisms intended to move societies from war to peace -- for example, the International Criminal Court -- could be effective in the local context.

As an uneasy truce took hold she wondered: Would community relationships contribute to stability and long-term peace? Or would they be characterized by tension and conflict?

It was some of both, she found. While villagers mended relationships they also wrestled
with tensions that posed risks for further cycles of violence.

During her 11 months of fieldwork, Golden attended community events and observed people in their homes. She conducted in-depth interviews -- 24 with local experts on post-war rebuilding, and, working with a team of interviewers and translators, 91 more with a random sample of residents and community leaders.

One of her primary findings was that while war and displacement deeply undercut communal life, in some ways weakening trust and unity, they also gave rise to a new type of unity, one based in small groups rather than the village as a whole. The war brought broad ocial changes, she explains, including a crisis in leadership and in the socialization of youth. These changes, in turn, resulted in a decline in communal work and the rise of small groups hat competed for resources. The net effect was less unity and cohesion.

Golden says that while sociologists have long studied the factors that bring people together, as well as those leading to conflict and animosity, research on how those processes occur in post-war societies was underdeveloped.

Fragile coexistence
So she developed a conceptual model of the postwar transition from "fragile coexistence" to stability. Her model shows how the local context matters. In addition to formal institutions designed to help societies rebuild, daily social interactions create informal mechanisms that can facilitate the transitional process, and others that may block it. It can be applied beyond Northern Uganda, she says, although specific findings would vary with each case.

The model's fundamental virtue is that "it takes seriously the stage of fragile coexistence," olden says, "a period where survivors are renegotiating their communal life, engaging in social processes that either lead to long-term stability or toward renewed violence and instability."

She also points out that what happens at the local level matters, not only for the stability of particular villages, but for preventing broader regional or national violence. "Looking closely at this fragile stage is essential; too often violence is cyclical and broader national or regional wars or conflicts have deep roots in local social relationships."

Debt of gratitude
By September, with the research phase of her work complete, it was time for Golden to return to Minnesota. First, though, she wanted to settle that debt of gratitude with a thank-you gift. What could she give that would help rebuild relationships while also restoring livelihoods? Goats, said leaders in one village. Small loans, said another. A corn-grinding mill, said the third.

The requests were reasonable. The responsibility was immense.

"I went into it thinking, 'I'm just a student. I'm not an organization with a budget. I don't have funds to do this,'" Golden recalls.

Awach village: bringing home the water

Nevertheless, she began to work her personal networks at the University and in Washington County, where she had grown up. She sold tickets to a dinner cruise on the St. Croix River, and during that holiday season urged people to give a gift of a goat for $75. She credits the generosity of the people in Minnesota for the success of her grassroots drive, which
yielded $3,000 per village.

By April 2012, she was back in Uganda with enough money to:

» Purchase 45 goats for families in Lukodi village, with the understanding that the offspring would be distributed to additional families;

» Provide 20 loans in Awach village, with half of the repayments going back to the loan
fund and half to school scholarships; and

» Purchase a corn-grinding mill for Ajulu village, with profits going into community development.

Now, having just defended her dissertation this fall, Golden is a visiting research fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, where she is developing her research into a book.

The value of Golden's research goes far beyond East Africa, says sociology department
chair Elizabeth Heger Boyle. It provides "important lessons for those who want to help communities transition to justice and peace after war" -- an effort for which there persists, tragically, continued demand.

Sharon Schmickle, B.A. '81, journalism and statistics, writes for MinnPost.com and is a journalism mentor in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania. She previously reported for the Minneapolis Star Tribune from its Washington bureau and covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, National Press Club's Washington Correspondent of the Year, and won the Overseas Press Club of America award for coverage of trade friction

Benjamin Klemme, candidate for a Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestra Conducting degree, is supported by a graduate assistantship. Advisor: Mark Russell SmithPhoto by Lisa Miller

It looks like dancing. Benjamin Klemme stands on a podium before a baby grand and a classroom of fellow student-conductors. His gestures alternate between grand sweeps of the arms and tiny flicks of a skinny white baton. He stops to cup his left hand before his face, pressing thumb to fingers as if pinching out a candle; two pianists, crowded behind the single keyboard, let the room fall silent.

Klemme's eyes lock on instructor Mark Russell Smith, the artistic director of orchestral studies, who mirrors him behind the pianists. He and Klemme could be twins, save for Klemme's wire-framed glasses and mop of brown hair. Both wear black button-down shirts, black jeans, black sneakers. Smith is quick to critique. "It's really about capturing the atmosphere," he says. "It's so much more magical if you stop moving and the audience is like: sigh."

Klemme lifts his arms with new energy. The pianists pound out the climactic scherzo of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 while Smith calls out beats like a drill sergeant: one-two-three, one-two-three. Mid-phrase he halts Klemme, his voice sharp. "It's not energetic enough! It's not savage enough!"

Klemme lowers his baton, then, determined, raises it once more. This time there are no interruptions. The piano eventually dampens, and Smith grants Klemme the response he's worked for the last 20 minutes.

"That was much better," Smith says. "Now let's move on."

Every gesture considered
Historians say the first conductors were string players who, much like today's concertmasters, led their ensembles by keeping rhythm with their bows. Although contemporary conductors don't play with the orchestras they direct, "The conductor should be the best musician in the room," says Smith.

Photo by Lisa Miller

Klemme began his career as a trombonist. From the back rows of high-school and college concert bands, he cataloged the detailed movements of his conductors' wrists during the long rests low brass sections often count.

After learning to play the cello, clarinet, flute, French horn, and trumpet, he grew confident in his ability to communicate music not only to an audience but also to the performers themselves. He understands how a saxophonist breathes. He knows how a violinist bows. It's crucial to how he translates a musical score to an orchestra: Klemme inhales with the horns, swoops with the strings. That the conductor's postures mimic his musicians' is not coincidental.

"The conductor comes to the first rehearsal with every note as part of him, every gesture thought about and considered," Klemme says. But manifesting rhythm through one's body is just a small part of a conductor's work. If the podium performance is the iceberg's tip, then rigorous research is its underwater mass. For each piece Klemme conducts, he puts in hours of painstaking study to understand the historical, cultural, and political context in which it was written.

"I want to know where the composers were living, what they were doing for work, if there were special circumstances about the work they produced -- if the piece was commissioned or written for an event," Klemme says. He digs through newspaper clippings, reads letters sent between composers and friends. He's part historian, part psychologist.

Although Klemme argues no conductor can relay composers' emotions entirely, he does his utmost. "There are only imperfect performances," he says. "But we have an ideal. We try to advocate for the composers and understand the compositions in the context of the 20th century."

Translating a musical heritage for today's audiences
Such skills are not innate. Every conductor must be taught how to translate effectively music written perhaps hundreds of years ago for modern musicians and modern audiences. Seasoned conductors like Smith pass this knowledge on to novices like a family heirloom.

"The world is changing. The role of classical music is changing. But I so firmly believe in its intrinsic value," Smith says. "I still believe in its power and the necessity for civilized people to have it. I pour everything I have into sharing that legacy with my students."

Benjamin Klemme rehearsing musicians for the opera The Bartered Bride.Photo by Lisa Miller

Maestro, as Klemme calls Smith, has conducted the St. Louis Symphony, Houston Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra, among others, and has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma. A Juilliard-trained cellist, he studied conducting at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music under virtuoso conductors Max Rudolf and Otto-Werner Mueller. Like his mentors, Smith belongs to what he calls the alte schule (old school) conducting tradition. As much a philosophy as a physical approach, this European style isn't about flamboyance or pleasing audiences. It's about understanding and interpreting music, which is why Klemme spends as much time behind books as he does on a podium.

And that's saying something. Klemme estimates he's on stage at least 12 hours each
week. He conducts the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies and the MacPhail Center for Music's Chamber Orchestra. He's guest-conducted the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, and others. Today, when he's not conducting rehearsals for the University's Campus Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, or Opera Theatre, or working on personal projects, he's likely within a stone's throw of Smith, soaking up advice. "Sometimes he will get a twinkle in his eye, and he'll recall a certain time he learned something from Max Rudolf, and he'll share that with me," Klemme says. "It's a tremendous privilege."

Meanwhile Smith says it's a privilege to impart knowledge to students. His pedagogy combines tough love with compassionate guidance. His doctoral conducting seminar is ordered and quiet, aside from piano chords or a student's foot tapping the beat. His orchestras are attentive, all eyes fixed on his baton. He says the key is to instruct using both the brain and the heart.

"It's not my goal to make a bunch of little 'me's.' It's my goal to help each student find his or her unique nonverbal language," Smith says. Klemme hopes to engage a similar approach as a professor of conducting. A James Sample Conducting Fellow, he will graduate in spring 2014 with a doctor of musical arts degree.

Chelsea Reynolds is a doctoral student in CLA's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She has worked as a research assistant for the Association of Health Care Journalists and as an instructor of news writing at the Missouri School of Journalism. She has written for Men's Health, Better Homes and Gardens, and Midwest Living, among other publications.

Throughout this issue, you've read about the impressive work and contributions of our graduate students. You've seen how they work with faculty to create knowledge, and with undergraduate students as instructors, mentors, and role models; how they infuse their fields with lively exploration of issues both local and global.

You've seen how they challenge us to consider new solutions to old problems.

Most thrillingly, you've seen the future through the eyes of these visionary students, and gotten a glimpse of how they will contribute to the broader world over their lifespan.

In fact, ever since the University was founded our graduate students have made incalculably valuable contributions in dollars and productivity, in leadership and public service, and in the advancement of knowledge.

They've taken their knowledge and love of learning to the four corners of the world -- to colleges and universities, and to public and private industries across the spectrum of human endeavor. And lest you think that graduate education doesn't pay off in employment terms, please know that more than 90 percent of our grad students do get jobs! -- a success rate that speaks both to their talents and to the excellence and reputation of our faculty.

Consider for a moment the return on our "investment" in grad students over the years. They have:

- Become thought-leaders and knowledge-creators in every field imaginable: as champions of human rights; pioneers in new fields such as gender and ethnic studies, new media, and neuropsychology; artists creating new art forms that cross disciplines and cultures and uniquely express perceptions and understandings of time and place;

- Made discoveries about how the brain works; how we live and learn, work and play, wage war and peace; about health and wellness;

- Created businesses and services, made breakthroughs in electronic communications;

- Made new interpretations of timeless texts that advance our understanding of ourselves and our global communities and provide deeper and broader understanding of our multicultural world.

And that's just for starters!

Sadly, however, graduate student debt loads are also high. All things considered, graduate education at Minnesota is a bargain; but without fellowship support, it remains out of reach for too many aspiring scholars.

I hope you will consider supporting graduate fellowships in 2014, for the good of the students and the University, and for the greater good of people, communities, and human enterprise across the globe.

As I write on this cold December day, I know that by the time you receive this issue of Reach the joys of the holidays will be a distant memory. But in the spirit of the season, I want to thank you for the many ways you have given of yourself to CLA -- hosting student internships, providing scholarship support, and mentoring students overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of the world they are being educated to serve and lead. You are our invaluable partners, for whom we are most grateful!

Frank Sorauf, Regents Professor Emeritus, former CLA dean, and former chair of the political science department, died of Alzheimer's disease on September 6, at 85. His field of expertise was American politics; his books include Wall of Separation: The constitutional politics of church and state; Inside Campaign Finance: Myths and realities; and Political Parties in the American System, a seminal textbook written in 1968 and still in wide use today.

In the 1980s Sorauf was a resource to Senator Edmund Muskie's Task Force on Political Action Committees for the Twentieth Century Fund (now The Century Foundation); over the next two decades he wrote a series of books and articles about campaign finance. In 2012 he co-wrote with Federal Election Commission attorneys an amicus brief in support of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act; the Supreme Court majority cited the document six times in its opinion upholding the act. He never stopped caring about campaign finance reform, and considered the recent Citizens United decision a mistake.

As dean of CLA from 1973 to 1978, Sorauf vigorously supported the college's language requirement, because he saw languages as "the essence of our nature as human beings and our abilities to communicate" and as forming the basis of logic and knowledge. He was the first dean of CLA to shake hands with every graduate who marched across the stage at commencement.

He served on the board of the Minnesota Opera and on the Minneapolis Library Board. He was a fine pianist, and a devoted collector and scholar of Southwestern pottery; pieces from his collection can be seen at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Weisman Art Museum.

Charles J. Fillmore, B.A. '51, a major linguist and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, died February 13, 2014. Fillmore was extremely influential in the areas of syntax and lexical semantics and was one of the founders of cognitive linguistics. One of his major projects was FrameNet, an online structured description of the English lexicon. Read University of California, Berkeley's tribute to Fillmore at http://z.umn.edu/fillmore.

D. Burnham Terrell, emeritus professor of philosophy, died November 13 in Houston, Tex. He was 90. His fields of study were the history of philosophy and philosophy of mind; he wrote the textbook, Logic: A Modern Introduction to Deductive Reasoning, and wrote about and translated books by the 19th-century German philosopher-psychologist Franz Brentano. A Quaker, Terrell was active in the Twin Cities anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and was one of the faculty members who negotiated with the black students who took over Morrill Hall in 1969. "The amount of scar tissue was not great," he said later, according to an article in the Minnesota Daily. "There's a healthier attitude on both sides."

Clarke F. O'Reilly, Sr., B.A. '52, died September 27 at a hospice in Kirkland, Wash., at 85. He retired as chief security officer of the Seattle Public Schools, having worked previously for the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. He had been a Navy captain, with 27 years of active and reserve service (including in the United States Coast Guard), and held commercial pilot and seaplane pilot licenses. He belonged to The Quiet Birdmen, Navy League of the United States, English-Speaking Union, National Rifle Association, Seattle Guitar Society, and many other organizations.

Keith Gunderson, 40 years a member of the philosophy department, died October 14, at 78, after a two-year battle with liver cancer. His book Mentality and Machines, first published in 1985, took on the question of whether computers can think; he was an early participant in CLA's Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science. He was a poet as well, and while his poems could be philosophical, they could also address more observable things -- like a classroom of boys voting for the chicken for the Minnesota state bird. He won a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He earned bachelor's degrees from Macalester College and Oxford University, where he played ice hockey, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University.

David E. Smith, Ph.D. '62, American studies, died August 30 in Damariscotta, Me., at 87. He helped establish and he chaired the graduate program in American studies at Indiana University. In 1970 he went to Amherst, Mass., to become a founding member of the experimental Hampshire College. There he served for 10 years as dean of the School of Humanities and Arts, working to establish interdisciplinary academic departments and collaborative faculty partnerships. He was the author of John Bunyan in America, and an editor of The Macmillan Anthology of American Literature. He served in World War II as an aviation cadet in the Navy's V-12 program and graduated from Middlebury College under the GI Bill. He enjoyed music, building harpsichords, sailing, and exploring German history and culture.

Victor Wright Quale, M.F.A. '85, studio art, and former instructor in the Department of Art, died April 25, 2013, of coronary artery disease and insulin-dependent diabetes, in the home he designed in Cornwall, Vt. He was 72. An artist and cartoonist, he published his work in PUNCH, L.A. Magazine, and TWIN CITIES; his paintings can be found in private collections. Most recently he was collaborating with his sister on a children's book. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis he was named MVP and All-State Player after scoring the goal that won the state ice hockey championship. He later played in the Canadian Junior Professional Hockey League.

Julia M. Davis, dean of CLA from 1991 to 1996 and beloved member of the Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences faculty, died unexpectedly in Iowa City on March 8, 2013, at 82.

Davis was an internationally recognized pioneer in the study of language acquisition of hard-of-hearing children. She authored the seminal Our Forgotten Children: Hard of Hearing Pupils in the Schools, and co-authored the classic textbook, Rehabilitative Audiology for Children and Adults. A significant presence on the national scene in professional organizations, she was president of the Academy of Rehabilitation Audiology executive committee and received the Honors of the Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in 2005. She was a trustee of the ASH Foundation.

As an administrator, she was known for her hard work, uncanny talent for connecting with people, and insistence on complete openness and honesty.

She earned her bachelor's degree from Northwestern State College, Nachitoches, La., and Ph.D. in audiology from the University of Southern Mississippi, where she subsequently joined the faculty. At Iowa State University she chaired her department (the first woman to do so) for several years and then served as associate dean for faculty in its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 1987, she moved to the University of South Florida in Tampa to serve first as dean of its College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and then, from 1990 to 1991, as its provost. She came to Minnesota in 1991, and ultimately retired to Iowa City in 1997.

The Julia M. Davis Speech and Hearing Center is a daily reminder to SLHS faculty and students of her commitment to children and adults with speech, hearing, and language difficulties.

Erika Mozangue Drayton, B.A. '90, sociology, of Brooklyn Park, died of cancer on August 18, at 45. She was deputy chief of the civil division for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, and served previously as a prosecutor in Dakota and Hennepin counties. She created a federal civil-rights clinic at the University to help the disabled, military veterans facing employment-rights violations, and people facing housing discrimination -- the first of its kind in the nation. She created a similar clinic for prisoner litigation at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, and taught at William Mitchell College of Law, where she had earned her law degree.

Sheridan Lee, B.A. '56, Ph.D. chemistry, biology, and parasitology; died September 19 in Kauai, at 95. As a boy in his native China, he frequently ranked toward the bottom of his class, for which his father felt obliged to spank him. At the U of M and in graduate school, however, he blossomed academically. Plans to return to China to help address devastating crop failure were derailed by the persecution of his family by the Mao regime. After teaching biology at several U.S. colleges, he took a research position at the University of Hawaii. He later worked for the United States Department of Defense headquarters for Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), which sent him on a mission to China; it was his first visit there in 40 years. He retired to Kauai in the 1980s; when he was 92 he wrote The Mystery of Paul's Conversion, a book of religious research and analysis. He was a lifelong Gopher fan.

Larry Oakes, B.A. '87, journalism, died January 4, 2013, in Duluth, at 52, a victim of depression. He was a reporter and editor for the Star Tribune in the Twin Cities and Duluth, and before that worked for the Duluth News Tribune. As an undergraduate he was a reporter on the Minnesota Daily. Oakes was widely admired by the journalism community and by readers for his graceful writing and perceptive reporting. Emblematic of his work was "The Lost Youth of Leech Lake," a straightforward but compassionate 20,000-word, three-day series he wrote in 2004 examining the horrendous toll taken by alcohol, drugs, prison, and violence on children of the Leech Lake Indian Reservation; he lived on the reservation for six months to research the story. He covered cops, the courts, natural disasters, labor issues, life on the Iron Range, and more -- but fundamentally the human condition. Scott Gillespie, Star Tribune editorial page editor, wrote that Oakes gave voice to the vulnerable and marginalized, and "that will be his legacy in journalism."

Anna Rosensweig is interested in old French plays about "really powerful kings" -- but not so much because of the kings. What intrigues her most is how other characters in these plays resist the tyranny of monarchs. Since starting her doctoral studies in French in 2007, she's delved deep into the theater of 17th-century France to identify such expressions of protest.

While the public conversation about literature's role in promoting human rights has broadened a great deal in recent years, she explains, it tends to focus on texts written during and after the 18th century.

Rosensweig understands why this is so. "The 18th century is when our modern idea of human rights really emerges," she says. "We can trace the modern rights of the individual in part to important documents of the French Revolution."

But Rosensweig's research suggests that the 18th century doesn't actually mark the first appearance of the modern idea of liberty in literature. French theater from the previous century suggests it as well. For example, she says, "Characters protest the king's decisions on very personal grounds -- and also connect their complaints to the power of a wider community."

"For example," says Rosensweig, "there are a couple of plays I have studied in which a widow objects to the king's decision to kill her husband. She warns the king that her slain husband's descendants and followers will rise up against him in the future."

Rosensweig is finishing her dissertation with a Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship, a program created by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation to support Ph.D. candidates investigating religion and ethics. Ultimately, she hopes, her work will advance society's understanding of the possibilities for political opposition -- and of the principles that sustain human rights.

There's something enchanting about reaching into a 400-year-old play and finding the roots of modern liberty. And while it should not be remarkable that a scholar's dissertation about old French tales, tyrannical kings and protesting widows can shed light on the workings of the world, somehow it is.

Brenton Wiernik: Ph.D. candidate in psychology, supported by a National Science Foundation grant and a CLA fellowship. Advisor: Deniz OnesPhoto by Lisa Miller

Brenton Wiernik hopes to resolve a major concern in developed economies: the shortage of highly-skilled industrial workers, even in the face of high unemployment.

The second-year graduate Ph.D. student is conducting global research on the psychology of the problem, following a stint as a visiting scholar at the German Institute for Labor Statistics.

A big part of the problem, Wiernik says, is a cultural bias against skilled labor.

"We're finding that young people don't think that working as plumber, a welder or electrician is a 'real' occupation. They often equate those jobs with being a fast food worker," he said.

While economists have long pondered the skilled labor shortage and anthropologists have considered the skilled-worker stigma phenomenon, Wiernik brings psychological insights to the issue. He looks for consistent characteristics in those highly satisfied with their skilled labor positions, to help counselors and vocational trainers identify people who might be suited for the work.

"People who thrive in these jobs are defined by curiosity; they like to solve problems; they're relatively introverted and like to do things on their own," Wiernik says.

Based on his research, a counselor might urge students with these characteristics -- particularly those who like to fix things, but aren't interested in a four-year degree -- to try an apprenticeship to determine if the work might be interesting and rewarding.

He's also studying the psychology of global occupational migration. Basing his work on
surveys of people who voluntarily take jobs in countries other than their own, he hypothesizes that migrants who flee difficult economic conditions tend to be more willing to push themselves and take risks.

"I expect to find that those willing to accept the risks of migration tend to be dependable, reliable, goal-oriented and better performers," Wiernik said.

"This might suggest that immigrants represent a valuable population, even if they're are not highly educated or have other factors usually associated with success."

Her long-time research interests had been the environment and statistical modeling of natural processes. Upon entering the University of Minnesota's graduate statistics program in 2011, she learned that her advisor was working on data-driven approaches to understanding climate change.

"I immediately contacted him and began working... in this exciting area," she said.

"The study of climate change is in desperate need of statisticians who can help reconcile the complexity of the problems with methods that provide tractable answers," Dietz said.

Millions of people stand to benefit from the answers she is helping to develop. For example, her statistical modeling has shown how the maximum wind speed and the minimum central pressure of Atlantic tropical storms relate to each other - and, in some hurricane categories, lead to more potential for destruction.

Such findings not only lead to a better understanding of the physics of climate change.
Ultimately, they also shed light on questions of how to adapt to -- and, possibly, mitigate -- its effects.

Looking ahead, Dietz said, "Ideally, my work could help inform policy makers which may in turn help save lives now, and in the future."

Human Rights Program alumna Anna Kaminsky (left) and Visiting Professor Sandra Gomez Santamaria from the University of Antioquia, Columbia, who last September completed a three-week externship with the Human Rights Program.

With the support of a $1.25 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development, CLA's Human Rights Program has entered into an international human rights partnership designed to help young law students address human rights issues in their home country of Colombia.

Though Colombia is one of the oldest democracies in Latin America, its political and legal system has not been able to protect many fundamental human rights, particularly for vulnerable populations like displaced persons, girls and women, and indigenous and Afrodescendant groups. Meanwhile it contends with insurgents, paramilitary groups, and narcotics traffickers who jeopardize the political, social and cultural freedoms of Colombian citizens. The hope of this partnership is that providing Colombian law students and faculty with additional human rights education, work experience, and exchange opportunities will help them to better defend the rights of the people they represent.

In addition to the HRP, the program involves the U of M Law School's Human Rights Center and four universities in Medellín, Colombia.

Just a year old, the partnership has already had an impact. There is a new legal clinic at Universidad Católica de Oriente. CLA human rights faculty have offered short courses in Medellín and remotely provided supplemental classes for Colombian faculty via Skype. Students and faculty from Minnesota and Medellín are drafting a report for the United Nations on children's rights and hosting workshops on strategic human rights advocacy for Colombian leaders and decision-makers.

Last fall, the HRP hosted two Colombian law students for six weeks of study and internships at Twin Cities nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Victims of Torture and Advocates for Human Rights.

For CLA students who engage in research projects and engage with visiting Colombian students and faculty, the partnership is an opportunity to adjust their perspectives on international cooperation. Deeply involved in changing the landscape of human rights in Colombia, they gain first-hand experience in what it takes to turn plans into action.

John Coleman, chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's highly rated political science
department, will become CLA's new dean effective July 31, 2014, pending approval by the
Board of Regents in February.

He will succeed Interim Dean Raymond Duvall, formerly CLA's political science chair, who served after James Parente, Jr., stepped down in June 2013 to return to teaching in the Department of German Scandinavian and Dutch. Parente had been dean since 2008.

Coleman earned his B.A., summa cum laude, in government and history, from Clark University and his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At UW, in addition to chairing its political science department, he chaired the College of Letters and Science curriculum committee, and was Letters and Science representative to the campus's education innovation initiative.

An expert in political parties and elections, he is the author or editor of six books, and is frequently interviewed by the news media about current events.

In announcing the appointment, Provost Karen Hanson cited Coleman's successes at UW in the areas of interdisciplinary strength, internships, diversity in faculty searches, enhanced shared government and communication, reforms in teaching and advising, and fundraising.

She said he led his department through a period of severe budgetary challenges and "managed to restore confidence, rebuild the department, enhance its research profile, and reinvigorate undergraduate and graduate educational programs....

She said CLA has "the potential to lead the nation in building new paradigms for research and education in the liberal arts," and that Coleman would continue to build on work outlined in the much-praised CLA 2015 Committee Report submitted by faculty and staff to Dean Parente in 2010.

Hanson chose Coleman from among four candidates put forward after a national search by a 20-member search committee of CLA faculty, staff and students, which was chaired by Tom Fisher, dean of the College of Design.

With nearly 14,000 undergraduate and 1,700 graduate students -- nearly half the students on the Twin Cities campus, CLA is the University's largest college, as well the largest college -- public or private -- in Minnesota.

Lars Peter Hansen, Ph.D. '78, won the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, becoming the tenth scholar associated with CLA to do so. He shares the prize with Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago and Robert Shiller of Yale University.

In an interview with the New York Times, Hansen, now an economics professor at the University of Chicago, described the innovative statistical technique for which he won the prize as "a method that allows you to do something without having to do everything." The approach, called the generalized method of moments, allows economists and other social scientists to model impossibly complex problems about which much is unknown in ways that are still statistically valid.

Hansen began to shape his perspective as a doctoral student at CLA, working with two future (2011) Nobelists: his adviser, Thomas Sargent, now at New York University, and Christopher Sims, now at Princeton, who served on Hansen's dissertation committee. Hansen has since co-authored dozens of publications with Sargent, and continues to collaborate with Sims.

Katy O'Brien had already worked with young TBI victims--war veterans who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan--when she met Professor Mary Kennedy at a national conference. It was 2007, and Kennedy was just beginning to develop a program for students with TBI returning to college.

The concept fascinated O'Brien, then a master's student in speech pathology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. "I latched onto this idea that many people with brain injuries are young and they have a lot of life left," she says. "There are many things they want to do."

So she followed Kennedy to CLA, and now works with her on research that could someday help vets with TBI as they reenter the university. "It's a population that often has complicating issues--like post-traumatic stress disorder--but also has a great need for assistance with executive function," she says.

O'Brien says she was drawn to Kennedy, who started out as a hospital speech pathologist, in part for her clinical experience. "She knows what students are going through. She thinks about their life outside of being a patient."

A Leslie E. Glaze Fellowship has allowed O'Brien to conduct a three-year summer research project involving students with TBI, and undergrads from CLA have volunteered untold hours assisting her. "I'm really impressed with undergrad involvement here," she says. Now two years away from finishing her Ph.D, O'Brien says she's delighted with her decision to choose Minnesota for her doctoral work. "There's so much research to be done, so many ways to help these communities."

Returning to CLA after TBI, David Reimann met with Kennedy and her team of graduate researchers up to three times a week, figuring out strategies that would help get him through classes. To counterbalance his problems with short-term memory, they recommended he record lectures on his iPhone or use a smart pen as he took notes. (Retracing a section of one's notes triggers the pen to replay the matching audio recording.) They helped him estimate the time it would take to write a paper or take a test.

The same tools helped Kacie Carlsted, a senior at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, successfully complete the coursework she needed to earn a B.A. in mathematics and psychology. Carlsted, a native of Holland Lake, Minn., who sustained a TBI during a car accident after her senior year in high school, can't remember much about her life prior to the tragedy. She often gets dizzy and has recurring problems with short-term memory. But Kennedy's coaching has helped her become more plan-full, self-sufficient, and confident. "I've learned to organize my time better," Carlsted says. "I needed to learn how to set aside time for being with friends, doing homework, and making sure I eat."

Carlsted doesn't always reveal her TBI to people she knows because she doesn't want anyone to treat her differently. But she does find social interactions more challenging now than prior to the accident. "I find it hard to come up with something to talk about. If the other person starts, I'm fine. But beginning the conversation is difficult for me."

The impact of TBI is complex and broad. Initially, both Reimann and Carlsted had good reason to believe their lives would never be the same. But working with Kennedy has restored some of the normalcy of being a student, being a person, says Reimann. "My brain injury was bad. I feel blessed for the recovery I've had," he explains. "But TBI doesn't define you as a person. It doesn't change you at your core."

In today's overwrought way of speaking, a new pair of sneakers is as likely as the starry sky to warrant words like awesome, incredible, amazing, great, fabulous, wonderful.

Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow wrote that exaggeration is "an intoxication of words." He said it's what happens when "Language temporarily loses its self-control; it veers around the room making drunken passes at reality ...." Indeed, emptied of their rich meanings, words formerly substantive and distinguished become floppy and interchangeable clichés. In the process, our language is impoverished.

Meanwhile, there's poetry. It is precise. No empty words allowed. Ironic that the language of image and metaphor -- poetry's decidedly unscientific stock-in-trade -- after being turned and refined for hours or days or more in the poet's mind, can strike us so powerfully as to make us catch our breath, and with such resonance that it sometimes lodges, even unbidden, in memory. - Mary Pattock

Assistant Professor Peter Campion directs the English department's Creative Writing M.F.A. program, one of the most highly regarded in the nation. He has published two books of poetry, Other People in 2002 (U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky called it "thrilling"), and The Lions in 2009. "Letter from Ohio" is from El Dorado, due out in October. Campion edits Literary Imagination, the journal of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.

Campion has won some of poetry's most distinguished awards: a Guggenheim Fellowship, Wallace Stegner Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Joseph Brodsky Prix de Rome, awarded by the America Academy of Arts and Letters.

Everybody can develop a more agile -- and creative -- mind, says University of Minnesota cognitive neuroscientist Wilma Koutstaal. All that's required are some simple changes in the way we approach the content and processing of our thoughts. Here are her nine key tips:

Regularly expose yourself to new things, including new environments. Novelty is an important stimulus for the brain -- and for creative, agile thinking.

Vary the level of control in your thinking. When your thinking feels "stuck," try harder to exert control -- or try less hard.

Vary the level of specificity in your thinking. Avoid what William James called "vicious abstractionism" (taking statements out of their context), but don't get too bogged down in specifics, either.

Reward yourself -- and others -- for using varying levels of control and specificity when problem solving and innovating.

Capture ideas as they happen. Because our mental accessibility to our environment is always changing, reconstructing ideas that occurred even a few moments earlier can be difficult.

Develop ideas in parallel rather than one at a time. Doing so will help keep you from overinvesting in a single idea or version of an idea.

Use and respond to your environment as part of your mind. The environment is not entirely separate from your mind, and it is often easier to control.

Capitalize on the interplay of intrinsic motivation (doing something for the love and joy of it) and extrinsic motivation (doing it for financial or other rewards). Realize that each can contribute to creativity.

Andrew Oxenham and Professor Barbara Welke were named Distinguished McKnight University Professors.

Andrew Elfenbein and Regina Kunzel received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies.

39598
Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:05:13 -0600An Argument for Agility

The ability to negotiate quickly and even unconsciously between conceptual and practical action is embedded in the distinctive education provided by the liberal arts.
By James A. Parente, Jr., Dean

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=397734
397734

James A. Parente, Jr., Dean, College of Liberal ArtsPhoto by Lisa Miller

The liberal arts are once again at the center of the national discussion of American higher education.

During the month of June, arts and humanities faculty at Harvard publicized Mapping the Future, an investigation of current teaching in the humanities in the face of waning student interest. A few weeks later, the long-anticipated study of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences, commissioned by a bipartisan congressional group, presented a compelling case for the foundational role of the humanities and social sciences in training the knowledgeable global citizens of the 21st century.

Underlying both reports is the anxiety that the arts, humanities, and social sciences are underfunded and endangered, and that the welfare of our society is consequently at risk. Both documents are clarion calls to action: scholars are enjoined to present the arts and humanities in ways that engage undergraduates thirsting for a broad training in the humanistic fields, and politicians are reminded that the liberal arts are essential for the future well-being of our society.

It is unfortunate that the humanities and social sciences find themselves in continual need of apologists. Part of this "crisis" arises from the current emphasis on STEM (science, technology, and mathematics) in the public conversation, and part from a lack of understanding of the ways in which the humanities and social sciences can help resolve the big challenges of our time -- social inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, economic decline. Part is due to the understandable concern about whether arts and humanities majors can find stable employment, and part to the perception that research and teaching in the humanities and social sciences may have little relevance to today's undergraduates.

Such concerns are reasonable, and we in the academy have the responsibility to articulate clearly why we believe the humanities and social sciences are central to American higher education. I invite alumni and friends to help; I have heard repeatedly
from many CLA graduates how invaluable their liberal arts education has been to the fashioning of their careers.

The articles in this issue present ample evidence of the value of the liberal arts. Indeed,
our focus on agility and creativity make abundantly plain the ways in which a liberal arts
education prepares undergraduates for the future. Agility -- the ability to negotiate quickly and even unconsciously between conceptual and practical action -- is embedded in the distinctive education provided by the liberal arts. The liberal arts tack repeatedly
between theoretical and practical training: one learns, for example, not only about the nature of justice, but also about how best to argue for justice. One can study diverse approaches to pressing socio-economic issues -- and acquire the skills to communicate them in a second language. One can make art about the ill effects of climate change on the biosphere -- and formulate solutions to staunch further harm. The ability to formulate judgments, occasionally with conflicting and incomplete information, and to take action grounded in principles, knowledge, and experience is the hallmark of a liberal arts graduate; these are characteristics many employers desire and other nations seek to emulate.

As you may know, I am stepping down as dean of the College of Liberal Arts to return to research and teaching in the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch. It has been a privilege to serve as dean and to learn from our faculty, students, alumni, and friends about the diversity that comprises the liberal arts. As we continue to work together to promote the arts, humanities, and social sciences, we should never lose sight of the excitement of connecting these areas to other spheres of knowledge. It is not the liberal arts versus STEM, or the humanities at odds with the social sciences. Instead, in practicing the agility of a liberal arts education, we should remain mindful of the interconnections between all disciplines and the ways in which each of them illuminates the other.

Don Gillmor, M.A. '50, Ph.D., '61, professor emeritus, died February 14 at Rose of Sharon Manor, Roseville, of complications of Alzheimer's disease and other illnesses. He was 86. Arriving at the University's journalism school in 1965, Gillmor became the nation's foremost expert on ethics and media law, advised the Minnesota Daily (for 30 years), and prepared generations of journalism students -- a number of whom became professors at prestigious universities. He founded the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, with funds provided by Otto Silha, former president and publisher of the Star Tribune. "Don appreciated the significance of the difference between law and ethics -- between what we have a right to do and what's right to do," said Theodore Glasser, former assistant director of the Silha Center, now professor at Stanford University's Department of Communication. "But he also understood why questions of ethics precede questions of law, why what's ethical is a more foundational question than what's legal."

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication has established an endowment to fund the Donald M. Gillmor Memorial Fellowship in Media Ethics and Law, and will match donor contributions dollar-for-dollar.

Chun-Jo "CJ" Liu, longtime professor of Chinese languages and literature, died September 24 in a Minneapolis care facility of congestive heart failure. She was 90. Born in Beijing, she arrived at Minnesota in 1963, and helped the University become one of the first in the nation to reach out to China in 1979, the year communication opened between the two countries. She figured prominently in the creation of the University's East Asian Languages and Literature Library, and the China Center. Liu had previously taught at Vassar College, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia-Vancouver.

Jochen Schulte-Sasse, emeritus professor in the Department of Cultural Studies andComparative Literature, and the Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, died December 12 of progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare degenerative disease, in Piedmont, Calif., surrounded by members of his family. He was 72. Recognized as one of the world's most influential scholars of German and comparative literature, he helped found the cultural studies and comparative literature department at the University, where he had taught since 1978. The landmark book series, The Theory and History of Literature, which he co-founded and edited, is said to have transformed the intellectual landscape of the late twentieth century. Schulte-Sasse also edited the journal, Cultural Critique, which he was instrumental in moving from the Oxford University Press to the University of Minnesota Press, helping to establish the latter as a premier publisher of literary and cultural theory and intellectual thought. His scholarship engaged him broadly: from considerations of Kant and Hegel, to contemporary politics, to Harlequin romances. He objected to the practice of identifying too closely with any political party, issue, or person, believing it jeopardizes critical, independent thinking, which can be achieved through the study of the humanities, especially language and literature.

Milt "Beaver" Adams, B.A. '50, economics, of Edina, died November 18 of complications of multiple strokes, at 84. He served in the Korean War as lieutenant, worked for some years in the corporate sector. In 1970 he founded Adams & Others, an advertising agency which eventually also produced mini-books and corporate reports. Then, at the age of 70, believing that many good, new authors were "snubbed" by established publishers, he founded Beaver's Pond Press on a mentoring model, providing authors with editing, printing, sales, and marketing support. Among the 700-plus titles are Kramarczuk's Family Classics, The Twins at the Met by Bob Showers, and The Old Log Theater & Me by Don Stolz. In 2007 Adams told the Star Tribune, "I know that Beaver's Pond is my purpose in life. It is what I was meant to do."

Robert Cherry Foy II, Ph.D. '73, English, died May 1, at age 78, of complications from lung disease. He served in the Air Force, taught at the U of M English Department, and then spent the balance of his career teaching at the University of St. Thomas. A Shakespearean scholar, he chaired the English department from 1973 to 1976, and became the school's first director of faculty development. After his wife, Nancy, died in 2002, he began to get tattoos, explaining that "it's a way for [people] to mark on the outside that something has changed inside."

Peter James McKenna, Jr., M.A. '54, psychology, died April 3 in a Bloomington nursing home, at 88. For years, people at Minneapolis City Hall knew him as the "singing blind man" who ran the convenience store in the basement; McKenna had lost his eyes and two fingers to a tank explosion in World War II. He served in Germany in Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army, landing at Normandy, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and in his final battle in Germany. After his injury, he spent two years in the hospital -- and married his nurse. McKenna subsequently completed his bachelor's degree at Catholic University in Washington and master's at the U of M -- with help from reading aides. In addition to running the convenience story, McKenna worked as a benefits counselor at the Fort Snelling VA, and traveled as a member of Friendship Force International, a nonprofit cultural exchange program.

If you like to read and explore what's new in books, you may already be on Goodreads.com, the social netwoking site about books. Reach is on Goodreads, and we'd love to have you join us. See our Reach Magazine group to check out the latest books by CLA authors.

Get 20% off "Bound to Please" books

You can get 20% off "Bound to Please" books at the University of Minnesota Bookstore in Coffman Union, and 10% off other books (except textbooks). You can also buy online. Click on "Books" and then on "Bound to Please."

Nonfiction

Make Your Job a Calling

Bryan Dik and Ryan Duffy

Templeton Press, 2012/ What are the distinguishing characteristics of people who feel passionate, engaged, and alive at their jobs? More importantly, how can we find work that allows us to be one of those people? In Make Your Job a Calling, Bryan Dik and Ryan Duffy explore the concept of "calling," which is a sense that one's work provides purpose and is motivated by other-centered values. In some cases, people seek out a greater calling in their work by changing jobs, and Dik and Duffy provide several examples and practical suggestions for career changers. But making a dramatic career change isn't the only way to pursue our calling; the authors suggest how to re-focus current work or pursue one's calling through activities outside of work. They also point to a companion website, www.makeyourjobacalling.com, which provides a "calling survey," tips for job-hunters, and other activities to support career exploration. Dik and Duffy's work will interest to anyone who would like to find a deeper connection to their work.

Dik, Ph.D. '05, psychology, is an associate professor of psychology at Colorado State University specializing in career development. Reviewer Paul Timmins is CLA's career services director.

Minnesota Miracle, Learning from the Government That Worked

Tom Berg

University of Minnesota Press, 2012/ Unless you're old enough to have lived it, Tom Berg's Minnesota Miracle, Learning from the Government That Worked, must sound like a pipe dream. The book details the incredible (by today's standards) policy and political process changes wrought in the state during the 1970s. After the longest special session in state history, Governor Wendell Anderson installed what, at that time, was the most fairly balanced funding for education in America--the Minnesota Miracle. But the book is about much more. Berg follows his own and seven other legislative and staff careers of people intimately involved in the many changes of the time: open meeting laws, partial public financing of campaigns, smoking bans, building sports facilities. Berg and his colleagues, most of whom helped with the book, found Minnesota a special interest-dominated place where secrecy was the norm. They left it a model of openness under the public's control. If you care at all about Minnesota public policy, this is a "have-to-read" book. It carefully backgrounds each issue and tracks it to today. Well written, well researched, highly readable.

Tom Berg, B.A. '62, J.D. '65, former Minnesota state legislator and former U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, is now in private practice. Wy Spano, B.A. '60, political science, former lobbyist and political commentator, is the founder and director of the Master of Advocacy and Political Leadership program at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun

Joshua Glenn & Elizabeth Foy Larsen

Bloomsbury USA, 2012 / In order to write this review, I first had to pry this book from the hands of my tween-age kids. Not just for run-of-the-mill arts and crafts kind of fun, Unbored is thick with ideas for encouraging kids to entertain themselves. In the spirit of repurposing, making do, and being independently responsible for your own fun, the authors have collected projects, crafts, lists of books and films, games, and more in four categories: self, home, society, and adventure. It's almost like camp in a book, but with even more variety. It covers knots, building a shelter, kitchen science experiments, book excerpts, unusual history, and even writing to your elected officials. It also has some schoolyard games that parents may have forgotten, along with 21st century ideas of fun. Geared more toward tweens and teens, there are lots of ideas to keep a whole family busy for the summer and beyond.

Foy Larson, M.F.A. '02, creative writing, has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Parents, and other publications about children and families, and helped launch Sassy, a magazine for teen girls. Reviewer Colleen Ware, B.A. '91, English, is CLA's web editor.

The Evangelicals You Don't Know: Introducing the Next Generation of Christians

Tom Krattenmaker

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013/ Evangelicals? Surely you mean followers of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Minnesota's Michele Bachmann and John Piper--exemplars of that 1741 Jonathan Edwards sermon you read in high school English, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?" Tom Krattenmaker's evangelicals seem as if from a different planet, or bible. They offer Portland, Oregon, $100,000 for programs reducing the high school dropout rate. They admit they squandered Christian credibility in hostile reactions to the AIDS crisis. Their pro-life agenda includes broad public healthcare programs and a less confrontational approach on abortion. They see the rote embrace of conservative Republican politicians as an ankle shackle. They reject what Karattenmaker calls "religious totalitarianism," including the snide anti-Islamicism of Robertson and Bachmann. Perhaps most importantly, Krattenmaker's "next generation" embraces a nuanced world filled with complex imperfections that Christians should heal rather than merely crush like agents of an approaching apocalypse. Are they the evangelical future? We'll at least see better with Krattenmaker's fascinating portraits in hand.

Tom Krattenmaker, B.A. '83, journalism, M.A. religion in public life (University of Pennsylvania), is a Portland-based writer whose work appears in USA Today, Slate, Los Angeles Times, Oregonian, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Reviewer Jon Butler, B.A. '64, Ph.D. '72, is Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies at Yale University now living in Minneapolis.

Fiction

Theory of Remainders

Scott Dominic Carpenter

Winter Goose Publishing, 2013 / Thinking back to fourth-grade division problems, sometimes nothing produced more anxiety than a remainder. Had you missed something, made a mistake? Psychiatrist Phillip Adler has been haunted by a remainder--the missing body of his teenage daughter Sophie. Her murderer has been locked in a French psychiatric ward for the last 15 years, unable or unwilling to reveal where her body is.

With his life slowly falling apart, Phillip returns to France for a family funeral. In this small town where he once lived, life has moved on--his ex-wife has remarried and even has another daughter. Now that Phillip has returned he has a chance--perhaps his only chance--to solve this problem of Sophie's missing body once and for all, but he only has a few days. The townspeople are hostile to Phillip's dredging up the past, and his daughter's murderer only speaks in riddles. How far is he willing to go to heal his life?

Theory of Remainders is a tautly written page-turner with rich imagery and an absorbing plot.

Who knows where a liberal arts degree will lead? Where did your degree take you?
Let us know at clareach@umn.edu.

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=397422
397422

Notable!

The 2013 class of Alumni of Notable Achievement was honored at a March dinner. Dean Jim Parente read a short tribute to each honoree, and cited them all for modeling and inspiring greatness, and bringing distinction to the college. Read about them: http://z.umn.edu/ezf.

1950s

Kate Millett, B.A. '56, English, Ph.D. (Columbia University), feminist icon, writer, artist and human rights advocate, has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Millett, who wrote Sexual Politics, a seminal work of second-wave feminism, directs the Millett Center for the Arts in New York. Read the recent Reach story on Millett.

1960s - 70s

Joseph Westermeyer, B.A.'61 and Ph.D. '70 psychology, M.A. '69 anthropology, M.D. '61, M.S. '70 public health, received the R. Brinkley Smithers Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Westermeyer is chief of psychiatry service at Minneapolis Veterans Administration Health Care System and professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota.

Catherine Anderson, B.F.A. '69, J.D. '73, received the Visionary Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness. The award recognizes her accomplishments as a distinguished Hennepin County district court judge for 15 years as she overcame the difficulties of Stargardt disease, and her continuing volunteer commitment to the University's Department of Ophthalmology.

Terrance Burns, B.A. '74, political science, was awarded fellow status by the American Society for Quality Board of Directors. Burns is founder and principal consultant for Burns & Associates, Richmond, Va.

Keith Anderson, B.A. '76, philosophy, M.A. '83, architecture (Montana State University), published The Reluctant Architect: Language, Art & Architecture. Anderson, who lives in Montana, has received several awards from the American Institute of Architects.

Rebecca Blank, B.S. '76, economics, Ph.D. '83, economics (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), is the new chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously served as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and professor at Northwestern and Princeton universities.

Annie Griffiths, B.A. '76, journalism, one of the first female photographers to work for National Geographic, is executive director for the non-profit Ripple Effect Images, a collective of journalists who document the programs that empower women and girls throughout the developing world as they deal with climate change (see video). Her work has appeared in LIFE, Smithsonian, Fortune, Stern, and she has written several books. Griffiths recently received the Award for Excellence from CLA's School of Journalism and Mass Communication Alumni Society Board and served as keynote speaker at its Spring Showcase.

Cynthia Lueck Sowden, B.A. '76, journalism, published her third book, Ride Minnesota: 23 Great Motorcycle Rides in the North Star State. Now a freelance journalist, she previously worked in corporate communications, public relations, and advertising.

Kristie Bretzke, B.F.A. '79, has solo exhibitions at Groveland Gallery and Traffic Zone Gallery this summer, featuring her portraits and "poolscapes." She serves on the boards of Public Functionary and Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art in Minneapolis.

John Chubb, Ph.D. '79, political science, was named president of the National Association of Independent Schools. He is the interim CEO of Education Sector, a non-profit education-policy think tank, founder of Leeds Global Partners and EdisonLearning, and distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was previously a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

1980s

Ellen Abeln, B.A. '80, French, B.A. '80, physiology, M.D. '84, was inducted as a fellow in the American College of Radiology. Abeln is medical director of the Breast Center of Suburban Imaging in Coon Rapids, Minn., and staff radiologist at Unity Hospital and Mercy Hospital,

Maria Schneider, B.M. '83, music, M.M. '85 (University of Rochester), composer and conductor, released her seventh album, Winter Morning Walks, this spring. In April The New York Times said she was possibly "the most prominent woman in jazz":

Michael Ponto

Mike Ponto, B.A. '83, American studies, J.D. '89, a Minnesota Lawyer's Attorney of the Year, was also awarded the Minnesota Justice Foundation's Private Practice Lawyer Award. A partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, he led the firm's collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center and National Center for Lesbian Rights on litigation resulting in measures to prevent harassment of LGBT students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District.

David Gross

David Gross, B.A. '85, psychology, J.D. '89 (Harvard), a partner at Faegre Baker Daniels, is now a member of the firm's management board. Gross was named a top 50 litigator in the U.S. under the age of 45 by American Lawyer and was recognized for case as a top ten trial victories in the U.S. by the National Law Journal. He is a former president of the CLA Alumni Society.

Jon Rosales, B.A. '87, international relations, M.A. '98, public affairs, Ph.D. '04, conservation biology, associate professor at St. Lawrence University, spoke to the United Nations General Assembly as part of its Harmony with Nature initiative.
Paul M. Hoffman, B.A. '88, sociology, accepted an investment recovery position with Xcel Energy, supporting the company's Midwestern operating region. Previously, Hoffman worked at El Paso Corporation (now Kinder Morgan) and West Publishing Company.

Mary Stanik, B.A. '80, journalism, has published a novel, Life Interrupted. A communications consultant and regular contributor to MinnPost, she previously worked in academic communications and as a speechwriter for former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley during the Clinton administration.

1990s

Sheryl Lightfoot, M.A. '94, public affairs, M.A. '07 and Ph.D. '09, political science, a professor at the University of British Columbia, was awarded a Canada Research Chair, one of Canada's most prestigious research professorships. Her research focuses on indigenous people's politics, rights, and social movements.

Friederike Nelson, M.F.A. '95, art, marked her 70th birthday with a benefit fundraiser, "70 for 70," at which she sold her original paintings to sponsor the education of girls in India, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Flavia L. Zappa, M.M. '96, music, swam in the 24-mile Tampa Bay Marathon Swim, finishing in 15 hours and 10 minutes. The race is the longest sanctioned by U.S. Masters Swimming. Zappa is a violinist for the Sarasota Orchestra.

Tanetha Grosland, B.A. '97, political science, M.Ed. '04, Ph.D. '11, education, is an assistant professor at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Md. Her research interest is education for antiracism and intercultural competence.

Jeff Rathermel, B.F.A '97, art, M.A. '89, public affairs, M.F.A. '00, is executive director of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Last winter he mounted a show, "Articulating the Infinite," in the Traffic Zone Gallery in Minneapolis.

Emily Johnson, B.F.A '98, will premiere SHORE, the final piece in a dance trilogy commissioned by Northrop at the University of Minnesota, in June 2014. Her work is supported by a national MAP Fund grant, a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts grant, and a McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship for Choreographers.

Lindsay Brice, B.A. '99, gender, women & sexuality studies, J.D. '07, an assistant city attorney for the City of Rochester's criminal division, mentors young women through Bolder Options, a nonprofit focusing on at-risk youth, and serves on the Ann Bancroft Foundation granting committee.

Andrea Mokros

Andrea Mokros, B.A. '99, political science, is special assistant to President Barack Obama and director of strategic planning at The White House. She previously worked as director of scheduling and advance for Michelle Obama, and deputy chief of staff for Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.

2000s

Yvette Pye, M.A. '00, Ph.D. '06, geography, associate professor at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, published a memoir, Going from the Projects to Ph.D.: Transcending my Geography. Pye serves as president of the Association of Black Women in Higher Education-Minnesota Chapter.

Ryan Truesdell, B.M. '02, music, won a GRAMMY award for Best Musical Arrangement for "How About You," a track on his jazz album, CENTENNIAL: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans -- which received two GRAMMY nominations. Listen at http://z.umn.edu/truesdell .

A few days ago I attended an educational workshop where ROPI was the buzz. What is it? Return on Philanthropic Investment, that's what. The names listed on the pages surrounding this column highlight individuals, families, foundations, and corporations who stepped forward to provide a dynamic education for our students. All gifts to CLA are appreciated, most of all because they signal your faith in our college and especially our students. We are fortunate to have a sizeable group of givers this year, so please check our website -- http://z.umn.edu/clagiving-- to find a more comprehensive list of donors.

Let's take a look at the collective impact of your gifts during the 2012-13 school year. CLA students and faculty received more than $8.5 million dollars to support their academic endeavors:

- 900+ students received CLA scholarships, providing $2.8 million to offset their cost of attendance and ensure that they have access to important learning opportunities, including study abroad experiences and the chance to conduct research alongside leading
CLA faculty members as early as their freshman year.

- 500+ graduate students received CLA fellowships this year, providing $3.3 million to immerse themselves in their fields of inquiry, attend professional conferences, and purchase data and equipment to advance their own research.

- $2.4 million in teaching awards and research funds were received by our outstanding faculty to reward excellence in the classroom and to support frontier research.

- More than 50 students received $75,000 in internship awards, allowing them to hold unpaid internships at local businesses, nonprofits, and government offices throughout Minnesota and beyond.

Wow! What a testament to the power to change others' lives! Thank you so much.

To learn more about how to make gifts of stock, include CLA in your estate plan, or explore other ways to give, please call me at 612-625-5031.

Ken Talle, B.A., '66, history, recently created the Talle Family Scholarship Program. It awards ten full-tuition senior-year scholarships annually to exceptional undergraduates, who are selected by honored faculty scholars. The goal is to inspire, reward, and support academic excellence. Talle and the scholarship's first recipients celebrated at a May 2 reception.

39635
Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:11:11 -0600Putting It Together

After traumatic brain injury
By Joel Hoekstra

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=397259
397259

It was spring 2008 and David Reimann was where tens of thousands of Minnesotans are that time of year -- up north. He was driving near his parents' cabin, his sister-in-law in the passenger seat.

A pickup truck coming from the opposite direction hit them head-on. Reimann woke up in the hospital with multiple fractures in his hands and right leg. Several surgeries and more than a year of physical therapy later, he made, almost miraculously, a full recovery.

At least that's what he thought. But returning to the University to resume his studies in studio art, he had trouble completing his homework. His abilities to focus and organize were compromised. He couldn't process information as quickly as he used to.

As it turned out, the traumatic brain injury (TBI) he sustained from the accident, while less visible than the fractures he suffered, was every bit as challenging to overcome and more enduring in its effect.

TBI -- it's called the "hidden epidemic." According to the Center for Disease Control, more than five million Americans have survived accidents of various kinds only to find themselves in a long struggle with TBI. Symptoms include headache and fatigue, irritability and depression, memory impairment, and loss of the ability to concentrate.

And while TBI is devastating at any age, its toll is amplified throughout a lifetime when it affects its most frequent victims -- young people, impairing their ability to prepare themselves for the future.

Fortunately for Reimann, a therapist suggested he work with Mary Kennedy, an associate professor in CLA's Department of Speech-Language- Hearing Sciences, to rehabilitate his brain's "executive function" -- the ability to reflect on one's past and use it to shape the present.

Reimann jumped at the chance.

"If it were not for Mary and her program, I would not have graduated," says Reimann, who walked across the stage last May in CLA commencement exercises. "Those first few semesters I was back depended on her help."

Mary Kennedy directs CLA's College Program for Students with Brain Injury.

As founder and director of the fledgling College Program for Students with Brain Injury, Kennedy works with TBI victims who can benefit directly from her research. Here, she talks about her work and its impact.

Researchers estimate there are 1.7 million new cases of TBI in the United States each year. That seems like a lot.
Most injuries are considered mild, and the majority of those individuals will not have any long-lasting speech, language, or cognitiveprocessing problems. But among every 100 who have a mild injury, there may be 10 or 15 who have enduring problems.

When it comes to TBI, do you have a personal connection or motivation?
I had a cousin who had a severe brain injury when he was 19 -- the result of a car accident. The driver of the car was killed, but my cousin survived. He ended up with aphasia and a language impairment similar to Gabby Giffords'. He's paralyzed on the right-hand side of his body. But nonetheless, he went back to work part-time and learned to live independently. He even ended up getting married. He got back on his feet.

Physiologically, what happens during a TBI?
The neurons in the brain get damaged -- pulled, stretched, and sheared. The injury damages the white matter, so impulses that travel between neurons either can't make the leap or they get there more slowly. In some cases, the brain may be bruised by striking the walls of the skull, leading to swelling and creating pressure that needs to be alleviated. If the injury impacts the parts of the brain that regulate the heart, the lungs, and other vital functions, the TBI can be life-threatening.

What's the potential impact on behavior?
An injury can affect memory, reading, writing, listening, and word recall. It may affect speech and other high-level complex activities like planning, organizing, scheduling. It also can affect metacognition and executive function -- how we think about ourselves, how we think about our actions. For most of us, decisions made in the frontal lobe are split-second choice. We do them without thinking: Do I need to take notes? Do I need to schedule time to get a task done? But after a brain injury, you have to make a special effort to consider such things.

Initially, your research focused on "post-TBI metacognition." Would you explain?
Metacognition is the ability of someone to self-monitor or self-assess before making a decision. The hypothesis was that people with TBI have poor metacognition because they can't assess how they've performed in the past and use those assessments to make decisions and plan ahead. But what we found was that there were certain conditions under which people with TBI are actually good at assessing their own memory and making decisions.

So your research shifted....
Yes. The general hypothesis of my current research is that students with brain injury can self-regulate their own learning if they get some sort of coaching and support.

Why focus on students?
In 2007, I met a student on campus who had a brain injury. Malia and I started having coffee and she shared some of her struggles in classes and in social settings. I realized it was the perfect opportunity to apply some of the research I'd been doing. How could I help her think about her thinking? But most of the research around TBI and metacognition centers on therapy in medical settings or reentry into the workplace. There's very little literature or research related to individuals who are going to college or going back to school for retraining. How do they learn? What are the conditions that predict success or failure in that environment? I realized there was this huge void in our understanding of what students with TBI needed in terms of skills and support to go to college.

How large is the student population with TBI?
It's very difficult to come up with those numbers. Consider this: on the Twin Cities campus, about 60 students with brain injuries are registered with Disability Services. But surveys suggest that the actual population of people with brain injuries is roughly twice that figure. Multiply that across other institutions and across the country and you have a significant figure.

Can individuals with TBI handle academic life?
There are more and more students on campus with TBI -- athletes who have gotten concussion, war veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan. Treatment has advanced considerably in the last 25 years. Individuals who would've been in a coma in the 1980s now survive and go on to live productive lives. They want to work; they want to go to school.

We've identified three areas that predict the ability of individuals to succeed in any setting -- work or school: thinking and learning; time management and organizational skills; social skills and self-advocacy. We're researching how to support students in these arenas. How can we coach them to navigate those situations?

How do you measure progress in those areas?
Good question. We measure it in a variety of ways: You can look at changes in graded assignments and overall grades. You can look at students' self-reporting about anxiety levels. Longitudinally, you can look at the amount of time it takes to graduate, the amount of support individuals needed from Disability Services. Progress also can be measured in participation, socially speaking: Is the person employed? Is the person living independently? Does the person have a group of friends they can depend on?

How do individuals with TBI, like Malia, differ from other students?
People with frontal lobe disabilities don't necessarily look disabled. And they can remember a lot of information. But they don't use it very well. They appear disorganized. Their humor may be off. They can be kind of flaky. Now, you could say that about a lot of people, right? But most people are getting by. After a brain injury, you can't get by. For example, everybody procrastinates. But if a student with a brain injury procrastinates, they can't get pulled together at the last minute. They won't be able to write the paper. They will fail the exam.

What are some of the specific problems that students with TBI encounter on campus?
There are two common speech and language challenges: word-finding and slow-processing.

For word-finding -- an inability to come up with the right word while you're talking -- we try to improve mental flexibility. Each brain is unique. The way we make connections varies. So when it comes to word-finding, we don't always know what brain pathways will help a student retrieve the right words. It's like the words are in a vault and you don't have the key. We ask them to think of associated words. We try visualization. We encourage them to use a thesaurus.

Slow-processing involves always being just a nanosecond behind other people when it comes to understanding what others are saying. The students aren't "slow" -- it's just a matter of the connections between neurons being less efficient. The pathways may be less direct. We recommend that students find ways to compensate. When you haven't understood something, what are you going to say? Can you ask the speaker to repeat what was said? Or, in a classroom setting, can you record the lecture? We recommend using a Livescribe, a smart pen that records audio while you write and will play it back later.

Do such exercises help the brain heal?
From a neurological perspective, the brain may not change that much after a year of recovery. But neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to function and the increased connection of neurons, can and often does continue well beyond that if the person with the TBI makes an effort to learn new skills and manage their condition. We know that after therapy, certain parts of the brain will become more active. They light up on an f MRI, which suggests that some areas of the brain can take over the function of damaged areas of the brain.... But we don't really know what happens at the cellular level.

Do TBIs impact students' social lives?
In some cases, yes. TBIs often make people hypersensitive to light. So a student who's going to a concert may need to tell their friends that they need to arrive at the venue in advance. They need a sense of the lighting, of the noise. They need to settle in and make sure they're okay with the environment so they're not distracted during the concert. Sometimes they want to be up against a wall or at the back of the room where they can see what's going on around them. Their friends will need to be okay with that too.

You run a program for college students through the NeuroCognitive Communication Lab at the U. What do you provide that's different from what a tutor or Disability Services might offer?
Our main goal is to get students to be experts on themselves. We work with them to develop strategies that will get them through their courses but we want them to think more broadly too. We don't want to keep track of them. We want them to keep track of themselves. Do they need help from a teaching assistant? Do they need to approach Disability Services about accommodations? Are they using technology to its fullest, with a planner and checklist and apps? We want them to advocate for themselves.

Ultimately, what's the goal of your research and work specifically with students?
Students want to get these services on a college campus. They're done with medical rehabilitation and hospital environments. Ideally, I would love to see schools employ coaches who would deliver support through Disability Services to students who have trouble with executive function. I think if you measure the cost of students spinning their wheels and dropping out and not achieving their potential after college, you'll see it's worth the investment.

Is your work applicable to individuals beyond TBI?
Yes. Executive function is a factor in ADD [attention deficit disorder] and Asperger's. Many of the techniques we're researching could be used to help individuals with those conditions cope. Learn more about Dr. Kennedy's work coaching students with TBI.

Ever been frustrated on a website, trying to find even basic information? If so, you've bumped into the problem of "usability" -- the quality of human interaction with design and technology.

Writing studies students helped Hennepin County Library make its website more user-friendly.

Several months ago the Hennepin County Library asked a Department of Writing Studies class to review its site section-by-section for usability and to suggest changes.

The graduate and undergraduate students in Associate Professor Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch's class, Usability and Human Factors in Technical Communication, observed and interviewed library patrons who use the site. They explored questions like: How do patrons use these pages? What are their expectations? Can users find answers quickly? Is the language clear or confusing?

Based on their findings, they made suggestions to the library about language use, placement of search bars, icons versus text, and more.

"It's been eye-opening for us," said Hennepin County senior librarian Amy Luedtke, "and exciting to watch the user tests and listen to the test subjects think out loud."

The library -- not to mention the many thousands of patrons who made 21 million visits to its home page alone-- benefited from U of M knowledge and research capabilities, while the students got valuable experience working with a real-world client. - Kelly O'Brien

Sophomore Dan Crawford, left, with his mentor, Scott St. GeorgePhotos by Lisa Miller

If you listen carefully, you'll hear the climate changing.

That's thanks to a brainchild of Scott St. George, assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He uses dendrochronology, the scientific analysis of tree rings, to study changes in the Earth's climate over long periods of time.

St. George had an idea: take data about climate change, and make it into something you can hear. His goal was to help people understand climate change through listening rather than by reading. It's an experiment, says St. George, "but music touches people in a different way."

Enter Daniel Crawford, CLA sophomore. He'd joined the Dendro Center as a research assistant after taking St. George's class on biodiversity. Knowing that Crawford is a musician, St. George asked him to work on the project. Crawford jumped at the opportunity, and with support from an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) grant, was able to convert NASA climate data into musical notes.

"We're blending art and science," says St. George.

He plans to use the recording as a tool in his undergraduate courses, and the U's Institute on the Environment has produced a video to be used in outreach--all to help listeners understand climate change.

Each year UROP funds around 200 CLA undergraduates, 75 of them first-year students, to work on a research project with a faculty mentor. Program participants come from across the college, from art to anthropology, music to psychology. They do not receive academic credit for their work, but they do receive a small stipend, and, of course, have a significant mentored research experience. It's a benefit of attending one of the world's great research universities. - Kelly O'Brien

The Representing Genocide project, mapped above, illustrates how CLA focuses the power of many thinkers and disciplines on a topic, amplifying its influence in
the world.

Ancient Greek philosophers had no qualms about roaming freely among the disciplines, professing not just philosophy, but also rhetoric, ethics, politics, poetry, math and science. But with the rise of specialization over two millennia, their interdisciplinary approach gradually lost currency.

Today, though, it's making a comeback, perhaps because our era is stoked with expansive ambitions like the pursuit of a "theory of everything," or perhaps because of a natural swing of the intellectual pendulum.

CLA has long had a national reputation as an interdisciplinary pioneer, going back, for example, some 50 years with American studies, and 40 years with feminist, American Indian, and Chicano studies.

That point was made emphatically to the University Board of Regents when they visited the college last March. Calling interdisciplinarity a CLA signature, CLA Dean Jim Parente pointed out one of its significant benefits: "It is enormously attractive to bold, brave, and innovative thinkers -- the kind coveted and pursued by every University -- and helps us compete successfully for the top faculty."

How does interdisciplinarity work? Parente cited a project that got its start with sociology professors Joachim Savelsberg and Alejandro Baer -- a study of how genocide is represented in the media, law, and society. The Representing Genocide project had both local and international impact, including the production of international scholarship in several disciplines, an international symposium held at the Law School, a public screening at the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul and curriculum workshops for Twin Cities K-16 teachers on how to integrate the study of genocide into their curriculum. - Mary Pattock

The late photographer was celebrated in concert by his GRAMMY-winning daughter.

The New York Times called her voice "thrilling, chameleonic" -- and so it was onstage at Ted Mann Concert Hall in March. Lila Downs, Grammy winner and CLA alumna (B.A. '93, anthropology), performed to a nearly full house in a concert dedicated to her late father, CLA art professor Allen Downs.

Una Canción para Mi Padre (A Song for My Father) drew from her album Pecados y Milagros (Sins and Miracles), which won both a 2012 Grammy for best regional Mexican music and a Latin Grammy for best folk album.

Between songs, Lila invited her father's former students, some of whom had traveled from as far as Florida and California, to share memories of him and their experiences at the Winter Quarter in (Tlaxiaco) Mexico program, which he founded in 1972. Decades later, the dual impact of Down's mentorship and immersion into Mexican culture still resonated with them. One recalled the young Lila: "I was there when you were about six years old. You were so shy, you wouldn't even smile for the camera. I'm so proud of you now!"

Meanwhile, to coincide with the concert, the art department staged an exhibition of work by Downs and his Winter Quarter in Mexico students in the Katherine E. Nash Gallery.

The exhibition and concert signaled the launch of the Allen Downs Photography and Moving Image Fellowship.

While on campus, Downs visited with Latino students from the University, Academía César Chavez grade school in Saint Paul, and El Colégio Charter High School in Minneapolis, sharing the story of finding her path at CLA in the face of the isolation she felt as one of the few Latinos attending the University in the early 1990s. - Kelly O'Brien

An overflow crowd gathered to hear Lary May, professor of American studies and history, mark his imminent retirement with a lecture on how Hollywood since 9/11 has shifted its perspective on war -- a signature topic for a man with an international reputation for building the study of film and popular culture studies in the United States.

Unlike films made during the Korean and Vietnam wars, May said, Hollywood films about war since 9/11 have been mostly critical of the traditional narrative of American virtue and national security: think Babylon, Flags of Our Fathers, and the Bourne series. The reasons are many, and sometimes surprising. For one thing, movie-goers' tastes have moved away from westerns and Cold War themes. For another, public opinion in the United States turned away from the Iraq War. But just as important, Hollywood is responding to international attitudes and tastes now that it makes films for a global society; in fact, today's international box office contributes about 60 percent of Hollywood's revenues, he said.

May is expanding on the theme of his valedictory lecture in a book tentatively titled Foreign Affairs: Global Hollywood and America's Cultural Wars, scheduled for publication in 2015 by the University of Chicago Press.

In 2002 May was named Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor. His work in CLA over the last 35 years has made the Department of American Studies one of the premier sites for the study of the political dimensions of film and other forms of popular culture. - Kelly O'Brien

This fall CLA freshmen will read Louise Erdrich's The Round House, winner of the National Book Award for fiction.

Remember freshman year in college? And baffling questions like: Which classes should I take? What should I major in? Who can help me? Not to mention: Who am I, anyway? A course piloted last year, the CLA First-Year Experience, offers help. Designed to assist new students in figuring out what they want out of life and how to make their college years prepare them for it, the new, required, course offers one credit per semester on a pass/fail basis.

FYE combines online learning (learn your way around the U on your own schedule), a mentor in the form of a successful upperclassman (find out from an expert how to survive and thrive at a major research university), and academics (engage in discussions with faculty and students about a common reading). At the end of the year, students created video essays in which they reflected on what they had learned and how they had changed over their first year of college.

First-year-experience programs are flourishing around the nation, and it's likely no two are exactly alike. CLA's, which is among the largest, is thought to be unique in that it integrates three components essential for student success: peer mentoring, introduction to college life, and help mapping an academic plan based on a student's strengths, values and goals.

Before-and-after surveys showed that the course contributed to measureable differences in students' abilities to take advantage of the University's vast resources. For example, the number of students who were confident in their ability to connect with faculty rose, as did the number who were confident they could create an effective academic plan. And advisers said that students came to them more prepared for productive discussion than in years past.

Curious about the common readings? Last year's was the dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro; this fall students will read Louise Erdrich's The Round House, winner of the National Book Award for fiction. - Mary Pattock

Nicole Scott, cognitive sciences Ph.D. student, made headlines recently when she reported in the American Journal of Primatology on communication differences among chimps.

For one thing, she found that female chimps curry favor with males. "[F]emales sort of 'suck up' to them," using gestures of greeting and submission, she told BBC Nature. Meanwhile, among themselves, females are more aggressive and "apologize" less.

Males, on the other hand, have a more positive relationship strategy, using the four categories of gestures -- aggressive, submissive, greeting, and reassurance -- equally with both sexes.

Scott relates the varying behaviors to social structure. Both sexes cater to males, because they are physically stronger. Both sexes treat the opposite sex well, in the interest of finding a mate. And females, some of whom are immigrants from other groups, may be aggressive with each other to assert their roles in the community.

Her study was based on videos of 17 female and 5 male chimps made in spring of 2007 at Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom. She recorded and identified some 60 gestures used in social interactions -- for example, reaching, patting, kissing, mounting, crouching, hitting -- then classified and analyzed them.

Scott's work contributes to our knowledge about the links between communication and the nature of social groups. - Tessa Eagan

Most of us would like to be more creative. We may wish we could write, or draw, or play a musical instrument better. Or invent a new bestselling product, like a blockbuster toy or an app for a smartphone.

But even those of us who do not aspire to become another Toni Morrison or Steve Jobs may wish to bring more imagination and originality to our everyday activities, from cooking to gardening to remodeling the house.

Or we'd just like to be better at problem solving, both on the job and in the home.

For centuries, philosophers and scientists have been trying to understand the creative mind. Why do some people appear more creative than others? What internal and external factors influence creativity? How can individual creativity be cultivated and developed?

In her lab at the University of Minnesota, cognitive neuroscientist Wilma Koutstaal, Ph.D., has been exploring these and other fascinating questions about the human mind's capacity to innovate. That research has led her to develop a unique framework to describe what she refers to as agility of mind or agile thinking.

Psychologist Wilma Koutstaal is developing step-by-step thinking procedures that can help us enhance creativity and solve problems.Jonathan Binks

In simplest terms, Koutstaal defines the agile mind as one that moves nimbly back and forth between specific and abstract thoughts and between automatic (intuitive) and controlled thinking processes. And it does this under the continuous influence of emotion, action, motivation, and environmental cues.

Agile thinking is not the same as creativity. It's a much broader concept. But creativity does require an agile mind.

Koutstaal has given her framework for the agile mind a distinctive acronym: iCASA, which stands for integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract. Drawing on evidence from neuropsychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and other related disciplines, as well as on insights from the arts and literature, the iCASA framework offers a more encompassing and nuanced theory about adaptive thinking than the standard two-system model of cognition that divides thinking into "intuitive" and "rational" categories.

"We--and our minds, brains, environments--are much more improvisational than we recognize," says Koutstaal, "and we should learn and develop habits of thinking and acting that enable us to best capitalize on this to optimize creativity and innovation."
Last year, Koutstaal published a massive book on her research, aptly titled The Agile Mind (Oxford University Press). It received wide praise from other scholars--and won the American Psychological Association's prestigious 2012 William James Book Award, which honors exceptional books that bring a unique and interdisciplinary approach to the field of psychology.

Detailed vs. abstract

For Koutstaal to win an award named after William James, the Father of American Philosophy, seems more than fitting, for his writings were a major early influence on her research. Of particular interest to Koutstaal were James's observations on the importance of finding the appropriate level of detail and abstraction in thinking.

James emphasized the human need for abstract concepts, such as truth, knowledge, happiness, and reality. Such concepts, he wrote in his 1911 treatise, The Meaning of Truth, enable us to travel "with a hop, skip and jump over the surface of life at a vastly rapider rate than if we merely waded through the thickness of the particulars."

Yet, while not getting bogged down in particulars is important, so, warned James, is the opposite: not taking a concept so far out of its context (the experiences from which it emerged) that it loses its original meaning. James dubbed this problem "vicious abstractionism."

Koutstaal has focused much of her research on exploring the question of how and why the mind maneuvers through different levels of abstraction and detail.

"There are problems that arise from being overly abstract," she notes. "This could include being overly global and not sufficiently related to the local circumstances. We see this in chronic worry, for example, where rumination takes over, and there are negative flights of fancy. Or we may see it in theater or sports, where sometimes one worries too much about the overall broad implications of the performance rather than focusing more closely on the performance itself."

On the other hand, over-focusing on specifics is also problematic. "Then things can become fragmented, and we fail to see the big picture," she explains. "We can become too literal and fail to see the relations among things and events. When this happens we may fail to benefit from our past experiences because we cannot see how something that we did that was similar might be useful in our current context."

Koutstaal's laboratory research has revealed just how important it is to the creative process to be able to move flexibly between levels of abstraction and specificity. In one experiment, published in 2010 in the journal Psychology and Aging, 72 adult volunteers were shown pictures of objects and then later asked to remember whether each picture had been presented to them in a specific or an abstract way. (For example, did they remember a picture of an old sofa as "a sofa" or as "old"?)

The volunteers' accuracy in performing this task was measured. Then they were given a standard on-the-spot problem-solving test. Those who had exhibited the greatest ability to shift in their memories between levels of abstraction and detail also tended to be the ones who were most successful at problem solving.

These findings suggest, says Koutstaal, "that flexibility of thinking depends on our ability to encode, recall, and use information at differing levels of abstraction." She is currently extending this research to develop detailed, step-by-step thinking procedures that individuals might use to enhance their creativity and on-the-spot problem solving.

Controlled vs. automatic

For a mind to be agile, therefore, it must slide effortlessly between abstraction and detail, finding the appropriate level at the moment when it is most helpful. But this aspect of agile thinking pertains only to the content of thought. Agile thinking also requires that the processes by which thought occurs be fluid, says Koutstaal.

In other words, the mind must move smoothly back and forth through levels of controlled (highly deliberate) and automatic (intuitive) thinking.

And that can be difficult. "Sometimes we try too hard, when really what we need to do is let up," says Koutstaal. Or, conversely, she adds, we sometimes let our minds "drift" for too long, when bringing more deliberation to our thoughts would be more advantageous.

Creativity, or "improvisation," says Koutstaal, "is about allowing your brain to be more integrative and to pick up on conceptual and physical opportunities that you didn't 'know' were there. But it doesn't mean that you go completely off course. You will have a goal, but it is how you hold on to the goal that makes all the difference. You hold on to your goal with a permissive or less-tight 'grip.'"

'Making' and 'finding'

Another central element of Koutstaal's iCASA framework is the idea of "making and finding," which, she points out, comes directly from the art world.

"'Making' is mostly about our abstract goals and plans and what we overall hope or expect to accomplish," she explains. "'Finding' is what our initial attempts at making produce or accomplish in the world. In finding, we look at what we have done or accomplished and then modify our goals or process."

Or, as Pablo Picasso once said: "You don't make art, you find it."

The human mind is constantly engaged in this perception-action cycle. You perceive ("find") your environment one way, and then you take some kind of action based on that perception. That action alters your environment, which in turn alters your perception of it. So you act again, based on your new perception. And so on.

Throughout this cycle, the content of your thoughts alternates between specific and abstract, and the way you think swings back and forth between automatic and controlled. The more smoothly and appropriately you make these shifts in content and processing, the more agile your mind--and the more creative you are likely to be.

Obvious examples of the making-finding creative process can be seen in the sculptor who constantly readjusts her vision for a granite statue based on how the stone responds to her chisel, or in the jazz pianist who improvises based on the musical responses of the other musicians with whom he's performing.

But examples can also be found in less obvious places, such as a hospital operating room. A surgeon is in a perception-action cycle as she takes out an appendix, for example. She may begin the operation in "automatic mode" (most appendectomies are routine and the surgeon may have done hundreds of them in her career), but should something unexpected occurs--the appendix is found to have ruptured, for example--then she responds with more focus (control) as she works on solving the new medical problem she has "found."

Understanding the perception-action cycle helps get us past the idea that cognition is either intuitive or deliberative, explains Koutstaal. "It's much more fluid and dynamic than that," she says.

It's also why innovative people start working and problem-solving without waiting for their creative muse. "Steve Jobs once sent an email to someone that had just one word--'Go!"--in it," says Koutstaal. "At some point, you just have to go. You can't wait for inspiration. The inspiration comes in the making."

Outside influences

Many factors, including memory, experience, mood, and sensory cues from the immediate environment, affect where on the continuums of control and specificity our thoughts are at any given moment.

Imagine, explains Koutstaal, being asked to come up with creative alternative uses for a simple common object--say, a penny coin. You are likely to draw on your memory first. You may remember something unconventional that you once did with a similar coin, such as using it as an impromptu screwdriver or as a steadying wedge under a wobbly table leg. Or you may remember observing or reading about somebody else using a penny in a memorable way, such as to check the tread wear on automobile tires.

Through persistence, however, and by studying and interacting with the physical properties of the coin, you may soon generate other ideas, ones that don't come from your own memories. By banging the penny on a table, you may envision using it as a miniature gavel. Or by rolling the coin on its edge, you may imagine using it to scratch messages into soft surfaces.

"In other words," says Koutstaal, "the processes of thinking about novel uses involve [more than] concepts, but also what you perceive and how you imagine yourself physically interacting with an object in the world."

Scientists have long used such alternative-use tasks as a way of measuring and assessing creativity. But research in Koutstaal's lab and elsewhere has demonstrated that just by engaging in such tasks, people can develop more flexible thinking.

In one experiment, published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2009, Koutstaal and her colleagues randomly assigned 160 undergraduate volunteers to one of three groups. One group was asked to spend 10 minutes generating non-conventional uses for several different objects, such as a chair and a pencil. Another group was given the same amount of time to do a word-association task (writing down the first word that comes to mind in response to a list of words). The third group was assigned neither of these tasks.

All the students were then asked to perform two different problem-solving tasks within a set period of time. One of these tasks was a series of six "insight" problems that require people to think outside the box or to creatively restructure the problems in order to solve them. The other task was a series of wordless paper-and-pencil tasks designed to assess people's ability to do on-the-spot visual-spatial reasoning (such as selecting which of five abstract shapes do not belong with the others).

Half of the students from each group were given the insight problems first; the others were given the visual-spatial reasoning problems first.

The results showed that the volunteers in the alternate-use task group solved significantly more of both of types of problem-solving tasks within the given timeframe than did those in the other two groups.

"Simply doing the task for as little as 10 minutes increased insight problem solving and novel on-the-spot visual-spatial relational reasoning," says Koutstaal, noting that these findings have since been replicated in her lab and elsewhere.

'Life is improvisation'

Is everybody creative? Yes, says Koutstaal. "The fact that we use language suggests so. We rarely use the same sentence twice."

We have to be creative in order to successfully navigate our environment, she says. "The world is always different than it was before, so we're always adjusting or inferring what we need to do in the current circumstances."

Having an agile mind, therefore, is essential to the creative process, whether we're writing the Great American Novel or creating a software program or launching a company. With an agile mind we can pay attention to details when it's important to do so, but then pull back and consider the bigger picture when necessary. We can control our thought processes when deliberation is needed, but then relinquish that control and "go with the flow" at other times.

People who seem particularly creative are often individuals who have developed optimal agile-thinking habits or who have a deep understanding of their own creative processes, says Koutstaal. "They may be doing something that works particularly well for them," she explains.

Fortunately, the rest of us can develop those habits, too. And understanding the underlying framework of the agile mind will help. "Most of life is improvisation," says Koutstaal. "We always have ideas coming in and out of awareness. But some ideas might be beneath awareness. We need to access those ideas and hold on to them when we need to."

Susan Perry covers consumer health for MinnPost. She has written several health-related books and her articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications. She is a former writer/editor for Time-Life Books and former editor of Nutrition Action Healthletter, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

But there's nothing uniform about what they stash inside: talismans of idiosyncratic interests, complicated lives, and sometimes more responsibility than one might assume, as we discovered one fall morning in front of Coffman Union.

Joe Perez
St. Paul, MN
Junior, communications/public speaking
Most critical: "I have one three-subject notebook. It's nice and easy to carry. I bus and have to walk around campus so it makes sense to travel light. It's small and practical."

Jeff Carter
Bedford, TX
Senior, psychology
Most critical: "My pen. I don't carry my computer around. Someone tried to steal it once, and some professors don't allow them."
Most unusual: "Guitar strings. I picked them up in Dinkytown and haven't had time to change them. I have two guitars, a ukulele, banjo. Play mostly Southern Rock."

India Gurley
Troy, MI
Senior, BFA acting
Most critical: "My wallet and my scripts -- The Importance of Being Earnest and Measure for Measure.
Most unusual: "Almonds. I just came from the gym and need a snack to get me through the next couple of hours."

Who knows where a liberal arts degree will lead? A geography major becomes
a UNESCO commissioner, a cultural studies major is a lawyer, an English major
is a stand-up comedian. Where did your degree take you?
Let us know at clareach@umn.edu.

1960s - 70s

John W. Carey, B.A. '64, psychology, was named a Twin Cities "superlawyer" by Twin Cities Business, Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine and Minnesota Super Lawyers. He is a personal injury attorney with extensive experience in the field of medical malpractice.

Robert J. Tennessen, B.A. '65, economics, J.D. '68, was appointed chair of a committee of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws that is studying the feasibility of a uniform statute on criminal records accuracy and access. He also serves on the conference's committee that is drafting a uniform statute on prevention and remedies for human trafficking.

Diane Mitsch Bush, B.A. '75, Ph.D. '79, sociology, won a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives. She is a professor at Colorado State University, and has served as a county commissioner. She ran as a Democrat, favoring the monitoring of groundwater quality around oilrigs.

Nancy Altman, B.A. '76, was named senior vice president, chief marketing officer, at Shopko, the national retailer. She previously held a similar position at Toronto-based Premier Salons, and at Younkers, a former division of Saks Department Store Group.

Sally Mays, B.A. '76, journalism, received the National Information Technology Pathfinder Award, which honors a school library media specialist who demonstrates vision and leadership through the use of information technology to build lifelong learners, from the American Association of School Librarians. Mays is a media specialist at Robbinsdale (Minn.) Spanish Immersion School.

Terry Faust, B.A. '77, studio art, has published Z is for Xenophobe, a novel about Hypothermia, Minn., and the aliens who invade it. Otherwise, Faust is a freelance photographer and writer.

1980s

Rochelle Calof, B.A. '86, speech communication, heads up Calof Production Services, LLC, a full-service, direct marketing company she founded that specializes in creative, strategy, data, e-marketing, print, mail, and fulfillment services. She previously worked in direct marketing for Carlson Marketing Group, Northwest Airlines, and Hyatt Hotels.

Yun-han Chu

Yun-han Chu, Ph.D. '87, political science, was elected to Academia Sinica, the Republic of China's highest academic institution. He is a professor of political science at National Taiwan University, and president of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, and has served as director of programs at the Institute for National Policy Research, Taiwan's leading independent think tank.

Patrick Mendis, M.A. '87, public affairs, Ph.D. '90, geography, was appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton a commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO.

Earl Lewis

Earl Lewis, Ph.D. '84, MA. '81, history, provost at Emory University, has been elected president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is the co-general editor of the eleven-volume Young Oxford History of African Americans.

1990s

John Troyer, B.A. '96, political science and theatre arts, Ph.D. '06, comparative studies in discourse and society, is a research fellow and deputy director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, England.

Maria Bamford

Maria Bamford, B.A. '93, English, is a stand-up comedian and voice-actress. She has appeared on The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Amazon.com named her CD one of the best comedy albums of the year. Watch her at z.umn.edu/bamford.

Tomáš Klvaa, Ph.D. '97, speech communication, is executive director of the Zdenk Bakala Global Non-Profit Programs, where he oversaw the establishment of the Aspen Institute in the Czech Republic. He previously worked as the press secretary and policy adviser for the president of the Czech Republic, and as a special government communications envoy for its missile defense program. He has been deputy editor-in-chief of Hospodáské noviny, a leading Czech daily newspaper, and last year published his first novel.

Nicole Druckrey, B.A. '99, sociology, has been elected to the board of directors of Adoption Resources Wisconsin. She is a partner in the Milwaukee office of the national law firm, Quarles & Brady LLP, focusing on unfair trade practices.

Cristi Rinklin's installation "Diluvial"

Cristi Rinklin, M.F.A. '99, art, is an associate professor of drawing and painting at College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass. Last summer her immersive installation, "Diluvial," was on display at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. Inspired by the biblical Great Flood, Rinklin says the work "evokes the beauty and terror of a world undergoing the forces of creation and destruction." Watch a time-lapse video showing the installation of this complex piece: z.umn.edu/rinklin

2000s

Ingrid Christensen, B.A. '02, interdepartmental major, is founder and president of INGCO International Interpreting and Translating, Saint Paul. Her firm won the Deubener Award from the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce in the Woman- or Minority-Owned category. The chamber also named her Emerging Volunteer of the Year.

Dessa, B.A. '03, philosophy, singer and rap artist, has had a shade of lipstick named after her by The Elixery, a Northeast Minneapolis cosmetics house. She will donate her share of the profits to CARE's Power Within program, which educates girls in poor developing countries. Dessa says she became aware of the powerful effects of educating girls by writing her final philosophy thesis.

Spencer Martin, Ph.D. '03, music, is the violist on Gems Rediscovered, an album of sonatas for viola and piano by four lesser known, late-romantic-era composers, on the Delos label. Martin has been principal violist in the Tuscaloosa Symphony, and performed frequently with the Minnesota Orchestra, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Wichita Symphony Orchestra and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Watch him at z.umn.edu/spencermartin.

Molly Hauge, B.A. '06, individualized studies, was featured in a photography exhibition at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif. Her work focuses on dance and its relationship to spiritual practices.

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, M.A. '05, Ph.D. '08, philosophy, was named a Champion of Democracy by the Ford Foundation for her work with Akili Dada, a leadership incubator she founded and leads that invests in the next generation of African women leaders.

Allison Cimpl-Wiemer, B.A. '06, history, was appointed to the board of directors of the Milwaukee Association for Women Lawyers. She is an associate in the Quarles & Brady law firm, working in commercial litigation. She has done pro bono work for the Wisconsin State Public Defender and the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee.

Peter J. Kaiser

Peter J. Kaiser, B.A. '07, English, cultural studies and comparative literature, has joined the Milwaukee office of the national law firm of Quarles & Brady, focusing on securities.

Svetha Janumpalli, B.A. '08, economics and global studies, founded and is CEO of New Incentives, a non-profit based on an economic model she developed: invest directly in poor individuals -- conditional upon improvement, to help them make better decisions and lift themselves out of poverty. She is interviewed at z.umn.edu/janumpalli.

Anna Dikareva, B.F.A. '10, art, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarship to the Slovak Republic. A painter and printmaker, she lives in San Francisco.

If you like to read and explore what's new in books, you may already be on Goodreads.com, the social netwoking site about books. Reach is on Goodreads, and we'd love to have you join us. See our Reach Magazine group to check out the latest books by CLA authors.

Get 20% off "Bound to Please" books

You can get 20% off "Bound to Please" books at the University of Minnesota Bookstore in Coffman Union, and 10% off other books (except textbooks). You can also buy online. Click on "Books" and then on "Bound to Please."

Nonfiction

A Minnesota Kid: In search of heroes and ghosts

David Butwin

Self-published, 2012 / Former Minnesota Daily sports editor David Butwin creates a vivid word picture of growing up in St. Paul in the late 1940s and '50s. His memoir is a trip through a series of vignettes that will evoke memories for anyone who grew up during those years. Here's a sample: The St. Paul Saints and Lexington Park; Mel Hime of the Saints and hated Sal Yvars of the Minneapolis Millers; the polio scare that shut down the Minnesota State Fair; Geraldine Mingo's unsolved murder and Carol Thompson's solved murder; the death of Twin Cities streetcars; Dick Nesbitt; Marty O'Neill; Red Mottlow; Ray Christensen; Bob Blakeley; Judge Dickson; Bill Diehl, and Ed Gein. Not only does Butwin present a well-researched picture of what life was life, he uses the reporting skills he learned in Murphy Hall and honed as one of the top travel writers in the nation to track down the characters and tell us how everything turned out. These fascinating stories are sure to reignite additional memories of some of the characters that dominated dinner conversations some 50-60 years ago.

Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community

Brenda J. Child

Viking, 2012 / In this concise, readable history, Brenda Child tells the story of the Ojibwe in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan from the women's perspective. She details their physical and spiritual identification with the earth and its seasons -- from giving birth to harvesting maple syrup and life-sustaining wild rice -- and how it followed that the confiscation of Indian lands by whites shattered the women's lives, families, and communities. She describes how Ojibwe women adapted as circumstances changed: they engaged in the fur trade, they made and sold food and clothing to settlers. When they lost their men, they hunted and fished. In recent decades they have labored in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis to promote the well-being of one of the nation's largest urban Indian communities. Most striking is Child's portrait of the traditional independence of Ojibwe women, who retained personal and legal rights upon marriage. And, giving rise to the book's title, she pointedly notes that the term for older Ojibwe women denotes status, strength, wisdom and authority: "mindimooyehn" -- "one who holds things together."

Child, chair of the Department of American Indian Studies, is a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation. Reviewer Mary Pattock is the editor of Reach.

Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action

Jennifer L. Pierce

Stanford University Press, 2012 / While working as a paralegal in a corporate in-house legal department in 1989, Jennifer Pierce witnessed the backlash against affirmative action firsthand. A policy intended to even the playing field in higher education and employment for women and minorities was turned on its head, as claims of reverse discrimination against white men (nearly all later proven specious) were given center stage in national newspapers. The issues are still relevant today, as seen in the October 2012 Supreme Court hearings on affirmative action related to Fisher v. University of Texas. Racing for Innocence revisits affirmative action battles of the 1980s and '90s through interviews with attorneys from her legal department, analysis of news coverage, and reviews of the most popular films of the time. You'll never look at Mississippi Burning or Ghosts of Mississippi the same way again.

Pierce is a professor of American Studies in CLA. Reviewer Kelly O'Brien is staff for CLA's Office of Media and Public Relations.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed

Alfred A. Knopf, 2012 / What would you do if your left hiking boot fell off the side of a mountain 38 days into a solo 1,100-mile sojourn along the Pacific Crest Trail? If you're Cheryl Strayed, you'd throw the right boot off the mountain, too. After all, she writes, "What is one boot without the other?" So begins Wild -- and her story is, indeed, wild: from the reasons that pushed her into the woods alone at 26, to events that transpired there. Her true achievement is that she never lets the reader forget how difficult the journey was. Her steady and quotidian narration of this most extreme physical and emotional adventure begs empathy. It's impossible not to put yourself into her boots. Would you, could you, have finished the journey under similar circumstances? Would you have been as brave? Strayed hiked to repair brokenness, to make a safe place for
her young woman-self in the world. There's a lesson in that for all of us.

Strayed, B.A. '97, English and women's studies, lives in Portland, Oregon.
Wild topped The New York Times Best Seller list, and was an Oprah's Book Club selection. Reviewer Clare Beer works for CLA's Office of Undergraduate Programs.

Fiction

Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen

Mary Sharratt

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012 / You may not think you have much in common with Hildegard of Bingen. She was one of the 12th century's foremost European intellectuals, a mystic and politically savvy Benedictine abbess; she spent most of her youth bricked up with a masochistic "holy woman" in a monastery annex in Germany. But in this deeply researched and lyrically written historical novel, only the trappings are exotic. Hildegard meets with love and abandonment, torn loyalties, dim-witted superiors and jealous coworkers, even the anorexia of a friend -- situations not unfamiliar to us in the 21st-century. Eventually escaping her confinement, Hildegard founded a Benedictine community based on humane values, and wrote books on natural science and mysticism. She composed the West's first signed music -- ecstatic, soaring chants (hear a sample at z.umn.edu/hildegard) and its first musical drama. None of this was "normal" female behavior, so along the way she had to outwit numerous powerful men, including two popes and Frederick Barbarosa, the Holy Roman Emperor. Some things never change.

Sharratt, B.A. ­'88, German, lived in Germany for 12 years and now lives in Lancashire, England. This is her fifth novel. Reviewer Mary Pattock is the editor of Reach.

The Orchardist

Amanda Coplin

Harper/Harper Collins, 2012 / In Coplin's debut novel, a turn-of-the-century orchardist, William Talmadge, lives alone, tending apricots and apples through the seasons with meditative zeal. Then two runaway pregnant teenagers stumble onto his land, and Eden goes to heck -- in wondrously detailed slow motion. Talmadge's care of his ripening fruit is mirrored in the rare attention Coplin pays to the characters' shifting moods, the pace of change in early 1900s Washington State, and the interplay between childhood pain and adult behavior. Violence unfolds matter-of-factly. But the evil in this garden is more particular: it stems from men's attempts -- out of lust but also love -- to control women's bodies and minds. The choices women make in response are tragic too, yet in the end the story feels less depressing than searching: how can we truly nurture the world and each other?

Coplin is a 2006 MFA alumna in creative writing. Reviewer Terri Sutton is staff for the English department.

Poetry

World Tree

David Wojahn

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011 / In World Tree David Wojahn seems able to inhabit any and every style. He writes his own versions of sonnets and villanelles, and a quicksilver free verse. He builds novelistic narratives and modernist montages. He employs a sophisticated, even baroque range of diction that accommodates the King James Bible as well as rock lyrics. And he can speak with the disarming directness of the plain style. To read a poem by David Wojahn is to feel how consciousness itself can hold and shape various and often contradictory experiences, perspectives, and feeling tones. I love, for example, the sonnet, "August, 1953," which describes the poet's own birth in Saint Paul, even as, in the manner of a film montage, the focus pans out to show various events occurring at that very moment, all around the world. This collection is filled with such wonders. Wojahn, who grew up in Mahtomedi, Minnesota, has won many honors; World Tree has garnered the $25,000 Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. He's a world-class poet, and this is his best book.

Robert Ulstrom, B.S., 1944, M.D. '46, of Golden Valley, Minn., died November 6 at age 89, of Lewy Body dementia. He was associate dean of the U of M medical school from 1966 to 1970, and taught and conducted pioneering research in pediatric endocrinology there until retiring in 1990. He was a Markle Scholar in medical science, received the Wyeth award for medical research; he served as a fellow at the Rand Corp., on the board of the American Board of Pediatrics and as an examiner for the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Emergency Medicine. He was track physician at Donnybrooke Racetrack in Brainerd from 1968 to 1973, an accomplished photographer, and a founding board member of the U of M's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Vera Schletzer, CLA professor of psychology and alumna -- Ph.D. '63, psychology -- died September 12 in Edina, Minn. She was 92. In addition to teaching, for which she was recognized with CLA's Horace T. Morse Award, she served the University as director of counseling for Continuing Education and Extension. The Minnesota Career Development Association honored her lifetime work with its Jules Kerlan Outstanding Achievement Award. A proponent of women's rights in the early days of "second wave feminism," she served as a charter member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and as a member of the Minnesota Governor's Commission on the Status of Women.

Herbert Mohring, professor of economics, died June 4 in Northfield, Minn., at age 83. He taught at the U of M from 1961 to 1994, and created the theory of "congestion pricing"-- a market-based solution to highway gridlock, which came to be known as "The Mohring Effect." It influenced policy-makers around the world, from the Twin Cities to Singapore, and materialized in the form of highway pay lanes and in the transit requirements included in the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2009 the fourth International Transport Economics Conference honored him with a special tribute; the Economics of Transportation, an international journal, plans to devote an entire issue to him. He earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Edward Coen, 93, of Golden Valley, died August 27 after a long illness. A CLA professor of economics for some four decades, he was beloved for his dedication to undergraduate students and his sense of humor. A student of his wrote, "I was a Ph.D. student in the 1980s, and we all needed to have a meeting each year with Ed to get our teaching assignments. At the end of mine I said, 'I just saw Raising Arizona and liked it a lot.' Ed said, 'Well, I'm glad it appeals to the intellectuals.' I knew then where the Coen Brothers [Edward's movie-making sons, Ethan and Joel] got their sense of humor."

Norman Fruman, professor emeritus of English, died of cancer April 19 in Laguna Beach, Calif. He was 88. He taught at the U of M from 1978 to his retirement in 1994, and previously at California State University- Los Angeles. His book, Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel, which exposed a pattern of plagiarism in the famous English poet's later works, was a shock to the literary world and beyond -- it sold in the mainstream market and was a finalist for the National Book Award, prompting Fruman to joke that it made him both famous and infamous. He served in World War II as a second lieutenant, the youngest combat platoon leader in the famed Rainbow Division. He was captured by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge, escaped, was recaptured, and liberated in April 1945. He earned his Ph.D. in English from New York University, writing his dissertation on Coleridge. In retirement he was a Fulbright professor at the University of Tel Aviv, and helped found the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers, an organization that opposes intellectual partisanship in favor of free and lively exchange.

Margery Durham, professor emeritus of English, died September 23 in Polson, Mont., at 79, having suffered from a rare form of palsy related to Parkinson's disease. She taught English literature at the U of M for 30 years, specializing in Dickens, Arnold, Tennyson, George Eliot and the Brontë sisters, and mentored many students. Before earning her Ph.D. at Indiana University, she worked as a copy editor for The National Geographic and other publications. She moved with her husband Lonnie to Montana after retiring in 1996, took up the violin, drawing and painting, as well as hiking and camping in nearby Glacier Park.

Kent Bales, professor emeritus of English, died October 8 in Minneapolis, at 76. He taught American literature, specializing in Hawthorne, for 41 years before retiring in 2008. As department chair he supported controversial initiatives on creative writing and feminist studies. He directed graduate and undergraduate studies, and chaired important university senate committees -- on faculty affairs and on faculty appointments. He twice won Fulbright Scholar awards, and later served on the National Fulbright Committee. Bales attended Yale University on an athletic scholarship, played football there, and graduated in American studies. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

John French, B.A. '55, interdepartmental major, died August 18 at his home in Minneapolis, at age 79, following a long illness. At Harvard he was president of the law review, then clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter. In Minneapolis he joined the Faegre and Benson law firm, practicing for nearly 40 years. An appellate attorney, he argued cases up to the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as associate chair of the Minnesota Democratic party (DFL), a member of the Democratic National Committee, and chair of the Mondale for Senate Volunteer Committee. French also served as president of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association.

Homer Eugene Mason, philosophy professor emeritus, died June 13 in Saint Paul, at age 86. He had earned his M.A. at the U of M, and Ph.D. at Harvard, both in philosophy. He joined the philosophy department in 1957, where he taught, pursued interests in Søren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and theories of justice and ethics that dovetailed with his political activities in the Democratic party. He served several years as department chair, and retired in 2000.

In this issue of Reach you've read about work by faculty, alumni and students that has ushered in new ideas and practices around the globe. Your philanthropy can support exciting work like this.

The U of M Foundation has recently created a new program, Fast Start 4 Impact, to enable new endowment gifts and pledges of $50,000 and above to make an impact immediately. It works like this: the University reinvests its own investment earnings into your new fund for the first four years, allowing your principal to grow even as payouts are made to students. There's no waiting for your gift to grow.

Thank you for all you do for CLA and the University. May 2013 be filed with great joy for you and yours.

Joyce Lyon's Approaches to the Garden III, will be part of the exhibition, "The House We Built."

Maybe the best way to describe the debut of feminist art in the 1970s is to say that it hit like a shockwave -- one that ricocheted sharply off the marble walls of mainstream galleries and museums.

Like the Impressionists, abstract expressionists, and surrealists before them, feminist artists introduced content that was revolutionary and often controversial. Shaped by the iconoclasm and egalitarianism of the time, they took on topics like women's identity, violence against women, and female perspectives on women's bodies, colonial oppression, and war.

The long-term effect was profound. In 2002, The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter wrote, "Most of the interesting American artists of the last 30 years are as interesting as they are in part because of the feminist art movement of the early 1970s. It changed everything"-- from content to materials to entire genres.

But in the 1970s, rebuffed by the male establishment, what was there for the women to do but to create their own venues? So they did. Feminist art galleries, educational programs, publications, and studios sprang up across the country, some of which continue to the present day, including WARM -- the Women's Art Resources of Minnesota (formerly Women's Art Registry of Minnesota).

An exhibition this winter at CLA's Nash Gallery features the work of a veritable pantheon of feminist artists from Minnesota and around the nation, all of whom were involved in founding those institutions -- hence the title, "The House We Built: Feminist Art Then and Now." The show is both historical and contemporary, and locates the story of Minnesota artists in a national context.

"The House We Built" runs from January 22 to February 23; several related events are offered, including a panel on the founding of WARM and the future of feminist art networks, featuring Lyon, WARM founders Elizabeth Erickson and Carole Fisher, and Joanna Inglot, art history chair at Macalester College. - MP

Joe Dowling

"You have created the quintessential role of arts leader, educator, and champion, forever enriching the lives of those you have mentored and those you have touched with your art."
~ from citation honoring Joe Dowling

Joe Dowling and his wife Siobhan ClearyPhoto by Lisa Miller

In May, Joe Dowling, artistic director of the Guthrie Theater, received the University's highest award, an honorary doctorate of humane letters. The event took place at Eastcliff, official residence of the University president.

Emcee Jim Parente, dean of CLA, praised Dowling for theatrical work that persistently poses important questions about life -- an endeavor he said is at the core of the liberal arts, and for cultivating new talent through the University of Minnesota-Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Acting Program, which Dowling cofounded in 1999. The program, which is highly competitive and attracts students from across the nation, has become a CLA signature.

U of M President Eric Kaler spoke, as did Board of Regents Chair Linda Cohen, Guthrie board of directors lifetime member Sally Pillsbury, and Judy Bartl, then-director of the B.F.A. acting program. Also in attendance were Dowling's wife, Siobhan Cleary, Provost Karen Hanson, and Steven Rosenstone, chancellor of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and former CLA dean.

Dominick Argento

Dominick Argento, America's pre-eminent composer of lyric opera, Pulitzer Prize-winner, and University Regents Professor emeritus, was honored at last fall's Collage Concert, a gala at Ted Mann Concert Hall that featured his own music.

Dominick Argento receives award from Professor David Myers, School of Music director (back to camera)Photo by Greg Helgeson

A roster of luminaries attended, including conductor Phillip Brunelle, soprano Maria Jette, opera legend Vern Sutton, and composer Libby Larson. They joined School of Music faculty and staff in celebrating the 85-year-old composer, who taught at the University for some 40 years and has been deeply involved in the cultivation of the Twin Cities arts community.

In addition to more than a dozen operas, Argento has written several song cycles, one of which won a Grammy Award. Another, From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975. His choral symphonic works have been performed by leading choruses and orchestras nationwide. He holds the lifetime title of Composer Laureate to the Minnesota Orchestra.

Argento arrived at the University in 1958, didn't plan to stay, but wound up being seduced by the Twin Cities area. "What is wonderful about this community," he said in a recent interview with Schubert Club composer-in-residence Abbie Betinis, "is not so much this place or that place, or this group or that organization. It's the people ... . Art is something for them. It's not an accessory." - MP

Every year nearly a half-million students in grades one through eight are held back -- not promoted to the next grade -- in America's public schools, according to a new study by sociology professor John Robert Warren and graduate student Jim Saliba.

"The fact that so many students are retained -- at some expense to their school districts and to the students themselves -- should motivate additional research on this topic," says Warren.

Published in the November Educational Researcher, the study is notable because it is the first to use an exceptionally reliable and valid database, the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data. Using the CCD, Warren and Saliba were able to examine grade-retention rates for each state and for the entire country from 2002 through 2009.

"We have not previously had a reliable and valid way to know how often children are repeating grades in each state or nationally," says Warren.

The researchers found that patterns of grade retention differ from state to state and over time. For example, Minnesota's first-grade retention rate is less than one percent, on the lower end of the spectrum. And although retention rates are typically highest in first grade -- between three and four percent, or about one student per classroom nationwide -- this is not the case in each state. - MP

There's no denying the benefits of the family dinner; dozens of studies have pointed them out. But parents don't have to feel guilty, either, when soccer practice and late nights at the office make it impossible, says sociologist Ann Meier.

That's because there are other ways to connect with children -- for example, while driving in the car, helping with homework, or going to movies together.

Meier and her colleague Kelly Musick, associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University, delved deeply into the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, a project in which 18,000 adolescents were interviewed at intervals between the ages 18 and 26 about their lives and well-being, while their parents answered questions about topics like income and living arrangements.

The researchers did initially find a correlation between family dinners and the welfare of children (as measured by mental health status, delinquency, and drug and alcohol use). But further analysis showed that the positive effect of dinner together actually depends on whether parents use the time to engage with their children and learn about their day-to-day lives. It's part of a total package that includes time spent together in other ways, good family relationships, parental monitoring (for example, of curfew and clothing), and the presence of both parents in the household.

They concluded that "the ability to manage a regular family dinner is in part facilitated by family resources such as time and money, and in part a proxy for other family characteristics, including time together, closeness, and communication."

The study was published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Marriage and Family.

Writing about their findings for The New York Times (z.umn.edu/familydinner), Meier and Musick had encouraging advice for parents: "If you aren't able to make the family meal happen on a regular basis, don't beat yourself up: just find another way to connect with your kids." - MP

... and -- Open Sesame! -- you'll find yourself in the revolutionary world of 21st-century education!

With technological tools debuting on the higher-ed landscape with astonishing frequency, writing studies professor Ann Hill Duin thought colleagues should have a tool for sharing experiences and successes on the "digital frontlines"-- and fast, too, before their information becomes obsolete in this fast-moving field.

In an amazingly short time -- only 10 weeks -- Hill Duin and two coauthors compiled a peer-reviewed e-book about innovative academic and research uses of technology at the University. More than 120 faculty, staff, and graduate students from 51 units contributed to Cultivating Change in the Academy: 50+ Stories from the Digital Frontlines at the University of Minnesota in 2012.

Coauthors are Ed Nater of the University's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and Farhad X. Anklesaria of the Office of Information Technology.

Cultivating Change features sections on how technology is changing pedagogy, and how it can solve specific problems -- for example, increase students' engagement or help them make the most of learning time. There's a chapter on community engagement, and another on University units that have made technological innovations with strategic, focused efforts, but little or no additional financial investment.

And in the project's fundamentally collaborative spirit, there's an instructive epilogue on how the project was conceived and executed.

The book has received considerable notice in the IT and education worlds on the basis
of both content and format. Cultivating Change is available as a pdf and in formats accessible by iPad, Nook, Kindle, and Android-based tablet. - MP

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut [author of Slaughterhouse-Five] informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have ... Enough.'"

From Enough: The True Measure of Money, Business and Life, by John C. Bogle, founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group.

According to ancient legend, everything King Midas touched turned to gold; unfortunately, that included his food and his daughter.

Indeed, for millennia people have debated about money -- how to make it and whether it makes us happy. Today, researchers are investigating both questions. Some are studying whether intelligence and personality traits are the secret to financial success. Others are looking at whether financial success alone buys happiness for individuals and if Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an adequate measure of well-being for nations.

CLA has an oar in this discussion -- in the form of the work of economist Aldo Rustichini. He and his colleague Eugenio Proto of the University of Warwick, U.K., have produced research suggesting how personality traits play an important role in determining both income and happiness. Last July they presented their thesis at a conference at the University of Oxford.

They noted that although the per capita income in the U.S. almost doubled between 1974 and 2004, the average level of happiness didn't keep up with it, and that in rich countries like the U.S., the wealthiest people are not, on average, much happier than the rest. In fact, data show that happiness only increases up to an individual income of about $75,000 -- and it may stall there.

So if money does not buy happiness, they asked, why do people look for it?

The answer, they found, is that the same personality traits that can make people successful can make them unhappy, even when they succeed. Ambition, for example, causes people to set higher standards. Then they may work harder, and success, including financial success, often follows. But if a good outcome falls short of the aspiration, disappointment sets in -- and the stronger the ambition, the greater the disappointment. Thus it happens that a raise can make an ambitious person unhappy.

Neuroticism also plays a role in how people respond to gaps between aspiration and realization. For the well-off, being neurotic is a reliable way to become dissatisfied with increased wealth. Meanwhile, low-income neurotics are disproportionately blissful when they experience financial good fortune.

What to do? Rustichini jokes that we could follow Roseanne Barr's advice: "If you set your standards low enough, you can achieve anything you want.'' - MP

States are represented on the cartogram according to total felon disenfranchisement. States that disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of former felons, such as Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, appear bloated.

The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world.
With just five percent of the world population, we nevertheless imprison nearly a quarter of the world's inmates -- and consequently have an enormous number of ex-felons.

Almost six million Americans could not vote in the last election because at some point in their lives they had been convicted of a felony -- anything from murder, to possession of illegal drugs, to copyright infringement. About 45 percent of them, or 2.6 million people, had completed their sentences. Laws vary by state.

University criminologist Christopher Uggen has spent more than two decades examining the role of the criminal in society. To display their recent research, Uggen and his colleagues, doctoral student Sarah Shannon and Jeff Manza of New York University, created a cartogram -- a map of the states distorted to reflect felon disenfranchisement. States that disenfranchise former felons, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands, appear bloated on the map.

The cartogram reflects great disparities. In Maine and Vermont, inmates can vote from prison. Thirteen states deny inmates only. And 11 states deny inmates, parolees, probationers, and certain ex-felons the right to vote -- for life. In Minnesota, felons regain voting rights after completing their sentences.

Florida, one of the battleground states in past elections, has the highest rate of felon disenfranchisement in the nation and barred 10 percent -- 1.3 million -- of voting-age Floridians from voting last fall.

In a 2006 survey, Uggen and Manza found that 80 percent of Americans support voting rights for those who have completed their sentences, 68 percent support rights for probationers, and 60 percent support rights for parolees.

Based on the poll and on the recent research, Uggen has formed an opinion: "When you're out, you're out, and when you're in, you're in. It's a compromise position that I think a lot of people could live with -- both policy makers and the public."

The marketplace will resolve issues of pollution and scarcity.By Greg Breining

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=380098
380098

"I wanted to be not only somebody who worked in the academic world, though I have the greatest regard for that, but executing new and bold ideas was as interesting as creating the ideas."- RICHARD SANDORSee a timeline of Sandor's career

Perhaps one of the country's most influential "environmentalists" isn't known as an
environmentalist at all. He doesn't study wild animals or raise local food. He doesn't write sensitive essays in the shadows of tall trees, or assail whaling ships aboard motorized Zodiacs.

No. He wears fedoras and collects photographs of world leaders. He is a financier named Richard Sandor. He was chief economist for the Chicago Board of Trade. For more than 40 years, Sandor has worked at the center of financial and environmental markets.

As Sandor, who earned his Ph.D. in economics at the U of M in 1967, explains in his new business memoir, Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation, he devised, promoted, and brokered "derivatives" that allow investors to, in effect, bet on fluctuating prices or interest rates and reduce their risk if the price of a commodity skyrockets. In fact, he has been called the "father of financial futures."

"That's not an overstated term in my assessment," says V.V. Chari, U of M professor of economics. "I think he played a very important role in designing those contracts and convincing regulators and policy makers, Congress and so on, that these were desirable instruments and then designed contracts well enough so that they flourished and now play a central role in the financial system."

But what does that have to do with the environment? In seeking new financial products to trade, Sandor seized on one of the most potent ideas since environmentalism became a movement -- that the proper market can more efficiently and cheaply clean up the environment than regulations can.

Sandor was instrumental in applying that theory to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, the progenitor of acid rain, the environmental scourge of the 1970s and '80s. In effect, he created markets to buy and sell the right to pollute. "Now we don't even talk about acid rain," says Chari. "We've accomplished the dramatic reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions without destroying utilities or the economies that depend on power generated from coal and other fossil fuels. That's been one of the great successes of the environmental movement."

More recently, Sandor has labored to apply financial trading to the emission of greenhouse gases to combat global warming, the signature environmental threat of our time.

So persuasive have been Sandor's ideas that in 2007, Time magazine named him one of its Heroes of the Environment.

And while proposals to trade carbon to reduce global warming are moribund at the federal level, Sandor is tireless, even at age 71, in persuading academics, regulators, politicians, and students that market forces will eventually prove the most effective and efficient way to cut the emission of greenhouse gases.

"It will happen," says Sandor, who even on a phone interview acknowledges wearing one of his trademark fedoras, as a boat horn sounds on the Chicago River outside his office. "After we try everything, we'll do the right thing, which is kind of a play on Churchill's line. We'll get around to doing it."

Low-Hanging Fruit

The problem begins when a financial transaction doesn't account for harm to someone -- or to everyone. For example, the sale of electricity pays for the cost of mining coal, of erecting towers and transmission lines, and of building the power plant. But it doesn't pay for the pollution of air or the emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. That's because no one owns the air and atmosphere and therefore no one charges for their use. The damage done lies outside the financial transaction. As early 20th-century British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou argued, they are "externalities."

There are several ways to deal with externalities. For a long time, we ignored them -- and the resulting air and water pollution. Then government began to regulate the effects of the externalities by setting limits, for example, on air and water pollution.

A more efficient way would be to "internalize the externalities"-- that is, include the price of air and water pollution in the cost of doing business. Pigou proposed using taxes and fees to impose these prices, and some economists continue to prefer that approach. Ronald Coase, then a lesser-known economist at the University of Chicago, proposed in his seminal article on the theory of social cost that a better approach would be for the parties to use private negotiation. This became the basis for emissions trading, which was later articulated by John Dales of the University of Toronto. Coase would later win the Nobel Prize in Economics at age 80, many years after his ideas had become mainstream in economics. His work would have a profound impact on Sandor's professional career.

Dales imagined that companies would be awarded "allowances" to pollute to a certain limit. And these allowances would be tradable. So companies that were able to operate well below their limit could sell their remaining allowances to companies that were having great trouble meeting the limit. The sellers would profit for operating more cleanly. The buyers would pay for failing to meet the limit -- and would have an incentive to get their emissions under control.

With this system, the market would identify and pick the low-hanging fruit. More stubborn problems would be postponed, but at considerable cost to the offending industry.

A Market for Acid Rain

In the 1970s and '80s, it was becoming clear that sulfur dioxide from power plants combined with water in the atmosphere and fell back to earth as "acid rain," defoliating forests and lowering the pH of streams and lakes to levels in some northern states that would no longer sustain life.

In 1990, as Congress drafted amendments to the Clean Air Act, Sandor wrote a paper for an ad-hoc environmental group proposing emissions trading to control acid rain (a position some environmental groups had already endorsed). The report leaned heavily on his experience trading financial futures at the Chicago Board of Trade. Sandor also traveled to Washington to push for passage of cap-and-trade legislation.

Though it seems remarkable in today's polarized political climate, the Clean Air Amendments passed both houses of Congress with broad bipartisan support -- including provisions that set a hard cap for total sulfur dioxide emissions and set up a trading scheme among industries. The law was one of the signature environmental accomplishments of the George H. W. Bush administration.

Sandor, who sat on the Chicago Board of Trade board of directors at the time, advised the Environmental Protection Agency as a participant on the Acid Rain Advisory Committee. He writes in Good Derivatives that at the initial auction for emissions allowances in 1993, Greenpeace demonstrators chanted, "Trading pollution is not the solution!"

Oh, but it was. Once the cap on emission took effect in 1995 and declined year by year, companies cut emissions and traded as anticipated to stay within the law. In the subsequent 20 years, sulfur dioxide (and acid rain) were cut by two-thirds. Implementation cost utilities just $3 billion a year, a fraction of what regulators and industry had anticipated. Estimated health benefits ran to $122 billion a year.

Sandor says the market for allowances not only enabled a low-cost compliance tool, but provided financing for utilities to make improvements to their plants. "It worked phenomenally well," he says. "And it was seamless."

For his role in putting economist John Dales's theories to work in the real world, Sandor was awarded the 2010 John H. Dales Memorial Leadership in Environmental Markets Award.

Father of Futures

Putting theory to work has been Sandor's lifelong enthusiasm. Son of a Brooklyn pharmacist, Sandor was a bright but unfocused student at Brooklyn College when his girlfriend (whom he would soon marry) convinced him he had to take economics. Sandor did, and the class lit a fire in him. "Economics I found fascinating because it was a very nice mixture of both theory and practice," says Sandor. "It had applications all over the place."

After graduation in 1962, Sandor came to the University of Minnesota to join an economics department that included Walter Heller, head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Kennedy. A microeconomic course from Leonid Hurwicz (later to win a Nobel in economics) kindled Sandor's interest in financial incentives and mechanisms designed toward social ends. It was in Hurwicz's course that Sandor first came across the writings of Ronald Coase; he was impressed by Coase's utter clarity, and the pure, succinct prose he used to explain complex topics such as the theory of the firm and social costs.

Graduating from Minnesota, Sandor landed at the University of California-Berkeley as an acting assistant professor. He studied commodity futures -- that is, buying now for delivery later as a way to hedge against the risk of rising prices. Agricultural commodities had traded in futures for decades. But with the rapid inflation in the latter years of the Vietnam War, Sandor saw the possibility of trading in financial goods, such as mortgages, as a hedge against rising interest rates.

In 1972, Sandor became chief economist at the Chicago Board of Trade to lead a new department to develop new trading products. This was his opportunity to translate theory into action.

"I liked the application," says Sandor. "I wanted to be not only somebody who worked in the academic world, though I have the greatest regard for that, but executing new and bold ideas was as interesting as creating the ideas."

In the years that followed, Sandor sat on the board of directors of the Chicago Board of Trade and worked at a series of companies (including Drexel and Kidder, Peabody). He worked on developing markets and contracts for various derivatives, so named because they are financial products that derive their value from some other good -- from pork bellies to mortgage rates to pollution allowances. His products enabled the reduction of sulfur dioxide, hedged risk for insurers, and managed risk with wild fluctuations in mortgage rates.

Sandor soon gained a reputation, as a Time magazine profile proclaimed, "for seeing value where others couldn't." His fledgling financial futures industry came to dominate the field.

With the financial collapse of 2008, the reputation of financial instruments has soured. That's unfortunate, Sandor says, because as his book title suggests, there are "good derivatives."

"A good derivative is one that is regulated, traded on an exchange, facilitates risk management, and is transparent," he explains. Agricultural futures are an example. Because of them, we spend less on food than ever. Even though drought has stricken the American breadbasket, "everything is functioning orderly. The crop risk management is being handled by the bakers, the millers, the farmers. We'll have near-record farm income."

Likewise, he says, financial derivatives reduce risk and the cost of doing business, translating into saving for investors, university endowment funds, state retirement funds, and life insurance companies. Because of reduced risk, homeowners save about $6,000 in payments on their mortgages on a typically priced home. Companies such as airlines use derivatives to hedge against the risk that fuel prices will, well, soar.

"So that's a good derivative," says Sandor, "one that serves a function, whether it's food or housing or interest rates. It facilitates risk management. It's transparent, traded on a regulated exchange, and it worked beautifully during the biggest financial tension we've had since the Great Depression."

By contrast, bad derivatives aren't transparent or traded on an exchange. An example, Sandor says, were the complicated mortgage derivatives associated with the recent economic crash.

"Really the subject of this book is to say, 'Time out, there's some good ones,'" he says. "That's what I'm on a mission to do."

The Quest to Cap Carbon

Following the success of cap-and-trade to control acid rain, Sandor was invited to speak on the much more complex process of trading to control the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

He delivered a paper on the subject at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He promoted the idea to a U.N. group in 1995. He presented again at the Kyoto climate conference in 1997. And by now he was working fulltime to develop markets for environmental ends through his own company, Environmental Financial Products.

Frustrated with the slow pace of international action, Sandor laid plans to begin a voluntary trading market in the United States. With help from the Joyce Foundation he created the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Sandor saw it as a pilot program that would demonstrate the effectiveness of controlling greenhouse gasses through a voluntary trading system until a national cap-and-trade program was passed.

"The goal," writes Sandor, "was to achieve our targeted emission reduction levels at the lowest cost possible." Sandor wanted to create a trading system that would encourage innovative technology and management, and sustainable farming and forestry. CCX would do that by providing a market for tradable allowances in power generation, petroleum refining, manufacturing, importing, and vehicle fleets. Participating companies in these industries would be able to trade allowances. Or else they could purchase carbon offsets -- that is, provide financial support to people like landfill operators and farmers who capture carbon."

CCX auctioned its first allowances in 2003. Without a law setting limits on greenhouse gases -- as there had been in the case of the sulphur-dioxide emissions market -- participation was a hard sell. Still, companies like Ford joined "because they wanted to learn how to do carbon accounting," says Sandor. "We really rattled a lot of people's thought processes."

Participation grew. Nearly 9,300 farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners registered more than 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gas offsets over 18.8 million U.S. acres. One Minnesota dairy farmer cashed a check for $10,000 for capturing and combusting dairy methane to generate electricity.

The future of carbon trading looked bullish in 2009 as the U. S. House took up the Waxman-Markey bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions and create a mandatory trading system. But the bill turned out to be the undoing of CCX and the carbon trading experiment.

Some environmentalists criticized CCX's approach of allowing the use of offsets in its program. Sandor argues that just as the market had to put pressure on polluters, it also had to reward those, such as farmers, who were reducing greenhouse gases, and provide an incentive to polluters who were not willing to change their behavior. His goal was to create a market for carbon allowances, not micromanage the economy by second-guessing people's intentions.

And the debate goes on. When California launches its cap-and-trade system in early 2013, the state will allow for the use of offsets in much the same way CCX did.

"It was a political disaster," Sandor says of the bill, which narrowly passed in the House but died in the Senate. "It failed to go after the singular environmental goal. It went from being an environmental bill to a revenue-raising bill. The Republicans then called it tax-cap-and-trade. It was an unfortunate turn of events."

Participation in Sandor's voluntary climate exchange collapsed as well. "I think the death
of cap and trade in Washington just exhausted everybody."

An Idea Too Good to Waste

The collapse of the voluntary exchange left Sandor undaunted -- and optimistic that carbon trading would someday figure in a solution to global warming.

"We proved the concept of a voluntary market," Sandor says. "We ended up with 17 percent of the Dow Jones, 11 percent of the Fortune top 100 companies, and 25 percent of the biggest power companies. Honeywell, Ford, United Technologies, IBM, Intel, American Electric Power, Dow -- these companies ended up cutting 400 million tons, which is bigger than the annual emissions of France."

Indeed, the experiment gave Sandor reason to promote carbon trading in Europe and Asia. Carbon trading is underway on a regional level in New England and California. Trading markets are operating in Europe and Australia. Pilot programs have begun in China and Korea.

"You have to recognize that the U.S. has become the backwater of environmentalism,"
says Sandor. "We're not the leader. We have also swung from our belief in markets. The pendulum has now swung to the other extreme."

In the future, Sandor imagines, greenhouse gases will be only one frontier of market trading. Another will be water. Pollution is responsible for dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay. Water shortages underlie civil strife across the globe. Trading allotments to reduce pollution and allocate water could ease conflicts, he says. "We're in a situation where water is not priced, so it's abused. There's no incentive to conserve it."

Despite the breakdown of carbon trading in the United States, market-oriented measures will be the key to protecting the planet, Sandor says, if only because no other scheme promises to work as well. The trick, he says, is not to let the desire for perfection stand in the way of progress.

"The Wright Brothers didn't start with a 747. The thing flew at 60 feet for 40 seconds," he says. "We will evolve to a solution, and it's very easy to argue what the perfect is. It is brutally difficult to figure out the road to perfection. I find the road to perfection an exciting road to travel. It's an evolutionary process."

Greg Breining, B.A. '74, journalism, has written for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Star Tribune, and Minnesota Monthly, and is the author of several books on nature and travel.

"One can imagine the existence of modern middle class only as long as the capitalist market is expanding. There must be endless surpluses for capitalists to exchange. The related question, then, is how is it possible? The answer I propose is that urban middle classes since the time of Plat in classical Greece have explicitly defined an earth that is not a living body. For them, it is a timeless space. If the earth were a living body it, of course, would be finite."

- DAVID NOBLE, Debating the End of History

Who's to say David Noble's first job didn't shape his adult career? He was only a boy, but the job did introduce him to a great thinker -- one whose explorations of the unity of time and space reshaped the way we look at the world.

The young Noble was Albert Einstein's milkman, and like Einstein, he accomplished -- albeit in a different field of study -- a complex new reckoning of time and space. Methodically relating those two axes of history in a new way, he constructed an original perspective on the New World, a national narrative that differs radically from the prevailing one.

It's a narrative rooted in experience and shaped by 50 years of scholarship at the University of Minnesota.

David Noble was only five years old and living in semi-poverty with his family on a dairy farm near Princeton, New Jersey, when his father was stricken with stomach cancer and could no longer work. It was the Great Depression; there was no "safety net." Eventually, in 1940, the farm was foreclosed and the family moved into a small barn that had electricity and running water.

"My worst memory is we didn't have money to pay for morphine to ease my father's pain when he was dying," says Noble, now 87 and a professor emeritus. His hair and beard are white and the two canes he uses for walking lean against his chair in the Saint Paul restaurant where he is being interviewed.

His grandparents had emigrated from Ireland and Germany. "I was told over and over again that they had left the Old Country of Europe, a place of war and scarcity, and had come to America, a better place of peace and plenty."

But he saw firsthand that the poverty he knew growing up did not match the myth of an American utopia and "exceptionalism."

"We were getting poorer and poorer. I did not believe that two such opposite worlds had ever existed."

Life was hard, but then came an important break. As a disabled veteran of World War II, Noble was entitled to the benefits of the GI Bill, and he enrolled at Princeton University. "I considered being a lawyer. But I decided to study history and the idea of 'progress'....And I wanted to teach."

He went on to earn his master's and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied the early 20th-century Progressive Movement. He was curious about the contradiction between "the utopian vision of what America was" and his real experience seeing widespread poverty and people hurt by the Depression and wars. He was skeptical of certain sacred dogmas held by the white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant social and scholarly intellectual-history scholars of the time.

In 1952 the young scholar found his way to the University of Minnesota to embark on work that over the next half-century would not only profoundly alter the discipline of American studies, but also challenge perspectives on our national experience in ways that reverberate to this day in our national discourse.

Along the way, he helped push CLA's American studies program into the top echelons of the field. The National Research Council ranks its doctoral program as among the four best in the country, along with those of Harvard, Yale, and Brown.

Two Worlds

The view Noble came to espouse challenged the prevailing "Two Worlds" metaphor. In that model, Europe -- the Old World -- is a place limited by time, encumbered by the barnacles of ancient customs, cultures, myths and religions, cities, and social models, and, especially, the natural world. It is complex, unstable.

The Two-Worlds metaphor is a concept that Professor Emeritus David Noble has long rejected. It's the nationalistic belief that America is exceptional for having escaped Old World values and is therefore able to transcend nature's limits to growth.

By contrast, America is new, simple, and modern -- having thrown off everything old and traditional. It was built from scratch on virgin land in expansive "free" and "empty" space (never mind the Native Americans who lived here for thousands of years). It's a stable country (if you disregard its history of racial tension) based on reason and science (ignoring current repudiations of environmental science) and eschewing the strictures of custom and culture. In this view, American culture is unique -- and, by implication, superior. In such a fresh green land, there is no end to what Americans can do with their democratic form of government in an unfettered marketplace. It's a magical kingdom where, despite the warnings of scientists to the contrary, there are no limits to growth. So goes, says Noble, the myth of American exceptionalism.

It's a notion that was paramount in the early days of American studies, and one that Noble continues to reject. Many nations consider themselves "exceptional" and are competitive with the U.S., he points out. "We are a variation on an international, modern, middle-class culture."

He leans his head back, closes his eyes as if visualizing his topic, smiles often, laughs
gently, strokes his beard and gestures as he talks.

"I think I played a role, not a huge role, helping move America from a sense of American exceptionalism," he says.

It was not an easy position to hold, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. There was "tension" between him and some of his conventional-thinking colleagues who considered his ideas heresy, he recalls. A couple called for his resignation.

His hero and role model was the late Mulford Q. Sibley, political science professor, who helped build the Department of American Studies. Like Sibley a controversial pacifist, Noble spoke against the Vietnam War. He laughs, remembering how they were under surveillance by the Army and FBI -- as were many faculty members on campuses across the country.

"My name is Thomas Jefferson."

Meanwhile, hundreds of students, some not even enrolled in his classes, were flocking to Noble's lectures on American intellectual history. He became famous for his end-of-semester classes, where he would arrive in the costume and character of a historical figure they had been studying -- Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Norman Mailer.

"I had a professor at Princeton who did it. I could see how it provided a much richer perspective, seeing, observing the past, being a participant," he says. "I would start off saying, 'My name is Thomas Jefferson' [he says this with a southern accent] and talk about his life. ... It kind of shocked the class to think that Jefferson was a Southerner, a slave holder."

One of his students was Scott Donaldson, a leading U.S. literary biographer now retired from William and Mary.

Donaldson recalls Noble's unusual lecturing technique. He might announce to the class, "I am a royalist," then present extreme reactionary positions to his students, some who appreciated irony, and others who were bewildered by his approach and inclined to take him at his word.

Noble had a bad back and sometimes lectured lying down. Donaldson recalls the oral exam for his doctoral degree, which Noble co-directed. Facing him from across the table were inquisitor professors from various disciplines, and "quite out of sight, lying on the floor to avoid torturing his chronic bad back -- Noble himself, whose disembodied voice occasionally lobbed me softball questions."

Other former students of Noble who have made distinguished marks in academia are the late Yale professor David Montgomery, one of the country's foremost labor historians; University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Nan Enstad, prominent specialist in women's 20th-century studies; and Carter Meland, noted Ojibwe author, scholar, and U of M American Indian literature teacher.

Meland remembers Noble as an important mentor and great teacher. "He was always encouraging us to look at the big pattern, not just details."

Noble won numerous teaching and research awards, including the prestigious Horace T. Morse Alumni award for outstanding teaching. In 1996 CLA established the David Noble Lecture Series, which supports a lecture each April by a prominent history professor. He chaired the Department of American Studies from 1988 to 1991, where he drew together segregated science and humanities departments for a closer relationship and common interdisciplinary goal.

In 1977 he coauthored the first multicultural history textbook, The Free and the Unfree, which examined how diverse "outgroups" -- Native Americans, Blacks, immigrants, religious minorities, women -- were left out of America's promise of equality and freedom.

Limits to Growth

This October, some 50 years and nine books later, Noble has just published Debating the End of History: The Marketplace, Utopia, and the Fragmentation of Intellectual Life. Sharply relevant to today's headlines, it disputes the theory that the modern world is moving toward utopia, that resources and economic growth are limitless.

It's about failed expectations that "democracy and the global marketplace would solve all our problems," he says.

He writes that many political and corporate executives are at war with the theory of climate change and resist government intervention in the economy: they believe the future of their financial world depends on keeping faith that a utopia is at hand, on American exceptionalism, on unlimited resources and economic growth.

But "the U.S. does not stand outside the earth's atmosphere," he maintains. "The devastating drought in the U. S. last summer may be related to global warming. We share non-renewable resources, such as oil, with people around the world. We cannot control the price of oil. The price of food is also related to worldwide demand."

He touches obliquely on the 2012 election campaign: "No president can solve our national economic problems because our economic problems are global."

But a pessimist he is not; he proposes an alternate world. In chapters on historiography and literary criticism, he's hopeful that the focus will shift -- from independence of individuals and nations to participation in a world of interdependence.

The notion reflects his personal creed: "Our scholarship must express our responsibility, our love for our neighbors, our fellow human beings." It's a creed he observes in his personal life. He and his wife, Gail, live in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of Saint Paul in a large house he jokingly calls Minnesota Spanish Gothic style, which he happily shares with a four-generation, inter-dependent household -- his daughter and granddaughter and their families, including a new baby. They take their meals together.

"In the future we will share scarcity. We will not share plenty. I hope that we will share scarcity in such a way that all will have an equal share."

That's the thesis he's planning to explore in his 11th book, Science Belies Capitalism. With a mischievous grin and referring to believers in utopian, limitless economic growth, he predicts, "They won't like me for it."

I stumbled upon women's studies in the late 1980s during my undergraduate years at MIT -- it was an enchanting and often frustrating time. Though I did not know this then, our classes encapsulated many of the debates occurring within academic and non-academic feminism during this period.

Grappling with the critiques of universal patriarchy and womanhood by women of color in the classroom, we searched for a way to articulate feminisms that could encompass the significance of race and nation, analyze global capitalism, and address the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Of the many books and essays that were assigned, there are five books -- Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, the Boston Women's Health Collective's Our Bodies, Ourselves, and Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality -- whose pages I remember breathlessly turning and whose spines still grace my bookshelves. These books, each in their own way, provided a new language and frame for understanding the world.

Regardless of due date, I always completed my women's studies assignments first, often reading passages of these texts out loud to dorm-mates as they lived their daily lives in the lounges slurping ramen, reveling in Star Trek reruns, or playing poker. Just as my friends were discovering Henry Miller, I was discovering Millett, Walker, and Morrison.

Amidst our sexual awakenings, Sexual Politics introduced me to, and them to, a new feminist vocabulary of patriarchy and sexism and a new way of reading both Miller and Captain Kirk.

Our many discussions about male dominance, sexuality, and oppression were, I think, formative for them and for me. It is there I learned how to read the world as a feminist. It was a heady and transformative time, indeed.

Jigna Desai, Ph.D. '99, English, is an associate professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and a founding member and former director of the Asian American Studies Program. She describes her work as an exploration of "brown skins and silver screens" -- often through the lens of cinema, especially Bollywood. She holds a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from M.I.T.

As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1950s, Kate Millett majored in English, so she learned the beauty and power of words. As an iconic feminist writer, she made excellent use of that training. Along with giants like Friedan, Greer, Daly, deBeauvoir, Lorde, Griffin, Firestone, Brownmiller, and hooks, Millet permanently reshaped the academic and theoretical landscape in North America.

As one of those teaching in a research university, I devoured the writings of these women scholars and activists. Millett in particular influenced my own thinking directly because she used literature as her frame of reference. I began not only to introduce women writers of all persuasions into my courses, but crucially, I began asking new and unsettling questions of the classic texts written by dead white men.

One instance in particular remains clear in my memory. My department chair had "allowed" me, not having any genuine objection, to offer courses in Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, and even lesbian writers. When, however, I proposed teaching a seminar on John Milton, read from a lesbian feminist perspective, that same chair balked, giving permission only after I had expended much energy to justify such an idea.

Millett's writings urged me to confront the classics, because she understood firsthand how limiting and debilitating it can be to an aspiring female undergraduate to keep studying ideas and works from theoretical positions that ignored characters and experiences like her own.

Millett was invited to give an endowed lecture, sponsored by the English department, which several hundred people attended, many of whom came from the larger community outside the gates of the University campus.

As I remember, she focused on ways in which Chaucer was forward-looking in his 14th-century depictions of relationships between women and men. While the enthusiastic young feminist activists were often unfamiliar with Chaucer, the few professors from the department were thrown off-center by the approach taken by the speaker. But people like me were excited to see such a powerful figure in "our" movement working deftly with literature from a very early moment in the development of English culture.

My sharpest personal recollection of Kate Millett goes back to a beautiful Sunday afternoon when her lawyer, a wonderful justice attorney in the Twin Cities at the time, asked me to accompany him and his wife as they took Kate on their pontoon boat down the St. Croix River. Kate was confined at the time to a psych ward at University Hospitals, put there by her family who did not want her first autobiography to see the light of day, since it was not complimentary to them.

Her determined lawyer had gotten her a pass into his custody for the day and he thought I might be someone who could talk with Kate about literature. So I agreed and Millett and I exchanged lively conversation as we drifted down that scenic waterway.

Though Millett published two autobiographical works -- Flying and Sita -- she is primarily remembered for the wildly popular and influential Sexual Politics (1970). Everyone who wanted to be taken seriously as a feminist scholar in the 1970s and 1980s read and absorbed that book.

So Millett's place is secure forever in any historical accounting of the second wave of feminist thought and action.

Toni McNaron, CLA professor emerita, was the U of M's first director of women's studies. In her 37 years at the University she taught English and women's studies "encased in silence" -- as she put it in her prize-winning book, Poisoned Ivy: Lesbian and Gay Academics Confronting Homophobia. She also wrote I Dwell in Possibility: A Memoir.

Kate Millett's book, Sexual Politics, was published in 1970. Her main thesis was that sex was a frequently neglected political aspect. She pointed out that all modern states were patriarchal, which isn't shocking today but sure was then. She also tied in literature and fingered famous authors that she felt were very sexist.

I ran for office in 1972 in Colorado. This was a whole new awakening; women had been left behind since Abigail Adams's famous plea to her husband to remember the ladies went unanswered.

Very few people have had their thesis become a best-selling book. Kate became a huge celebrity and many writers she fingered punched back. A huge back-and-forth followed and she must have felt very targeted at times.

Nevertheless, she sure began a real awakening among many women that they were going to have to fight hard to get a place at the table. The "guys" weren't going to give it away!

Patricia Schroeder, B.A. '61, history; J.D., Harvard, was the first female Congress member from Colorado, elected in 1973 to represent the Denver area. Women were rare in the House at that time. One male colleague told her, "This is about Chivas Regal, thousand-dollar bills, Lear jets and beautiful women. Why are you here?"

She served on the otherwise all-male Armed Services Committee; its chairman made her share a chair with Ron Dellums, a black representative from California, saying "women and blacks were worth only half of one regular Member" and thus deserved only half a seat. She advocated for arms control, military families, and women in the armed forces. She was a moving force behind the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and a strong proponent for women's reproductive rights.

She was re-elected 11 times, rarely with serious opposition, and retired in 1997.

In Sexual Politics, Kate Millett, intelligent, scholarly, courageous and committed, took on and analyzed, through a sexual lens, male views of women expressed in the writings of literary icons like Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, and D.H. Lawrence. She pointed out how damaging to women the political implications of such views were. They confirmed women as the subordinate sex, she argued.

Even before the book was published, another notable feminist, Robin Morgan, included an excerpt from Millett's book in her Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, which also became a best seller. Later, Doubleday, the publisher of Millett's book, said Sexual Politics was among the 10 most important works it had issued during its 100 years of publishing, even though it let the book go out of print for a while.

My own copy, now yellow with age, is well thumbed and underlined.

But favorable public attention for Millett was short-lived. Norman Mailer -- on all best-seller lists at the time -- fought back with an article attacking Millett's work in Harper's Magazine. And Time fed the furor with a December 1970 article that essentially labeled all women's liberationists as lesbians. Ever honest, Millett announced she was bisexual and remained an active participant in women's liberation groups.

Despite unfavorable, often mocking, media attention to Millett and feminists in general, the movement flourished. It should be noted the media in the 1970s was overwhelmingly white male.

Millett's and Morgan's books struck a chord with women, especially younger women, who
had not been moved by Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, that had shocked the world in 1963 by illustrating the dilemmas of being identified as a housewife. By the time Millett's book was published, younger women had been organizing small, intimate, consciousness-raising sessions and her book fed this group's dissatisfaction about their position in society.

NOW, the National Organization for Women, was formed in 1966, and Millett became an active participant and spoke around the country. Soon other organizations were formed, including WEAL, the Women's Equity Action League -- which I eventually headed -- and later the National Women's Political Caucus. Ms. Magazine began publication, coedited by Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin.

Feminism, although derided in the major media, became news as a full-fledged movement developed.

A split developed between the younger, more radical women, often characterized as lesbians or those who followed Millett's line of reasoning, and us "conservatives" who worked for changes in employment, education, and legal or political change. We were often amused for rarely were we called "conservative"!

Sara Evans, U of M Regents Professor emerita, rightly defined the two elements of the 20th-century women's movement as the liberationists and the legalists. While some emphasized the split between these two elements of the movement, I worked with the liberationists on many issues.

As in many political movements, those perceived to be more radical make those of us working for political and legal change look respectable or at least middle-of-the-road. Because the radical element serves to make the more conservative respectable, much can be accomplished.

Without Millett's book and the women's liberation groups we would never have had women's studies courses on campuses, never have had Women in Development, which
I headed in the U.S. Agency for International Development, nor, probably, would Sara Evans have become distinguished and rewarded for scholarship in women's history.

We who participated in the late 20th-century women's movement all had mentors who recalled the fight for women's right to vote and for birth control. I took those rights for granted and didn't know enough women's history even to be grateful for my foremothers. That taught me not to criticize young women who don't even recognize Kate Millett's name or that of Dr. Shymala Rajender, who fought the U of M and won the famous sex-discrimination case that gave me and many others pay increases for a while. And never would the issue of violence against women have surfaced and become an international human rights issue without Millett's Sexual Politics.

The personal tragedy, in Millett's case and that of many others, is that, as pioneers, their careers and psyches suffered. Millett could never find an academic job that would support her financially, nor did she have much success as an artist. She was too early and her work too explosive for the times.

Many of us owe a great debt to Millett and other women like her who gained celebrity for a time and then were shunned. They paved the way for the rest of us.

Arvonne Fraser, B.A. '48, managed the congressional campaigns of her husband, Don Fraser from 1963 to 1979, as well as his congressional office.

As legislative director of the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), she influenced Title IX legislation, and led efforts to open the Rhodes Scholarship and White House Neiman Fellowships to women.

She co-founded the National Women's Campaign Fund, and was regional coordinator of the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in 1976. She was a counselor in Jimmy Carter's Office of Presidential Personnel, charged with finding women qualified to serve in the administration, and headed the U.S. Office of Women in Development.

She served from 1992 to 1994 as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Rejecting patriarchy is the sine qua non for human freedom. Homage to an American icon: Kate Millett.

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=380069
380069

Kate Millett lives near Poughkeepsie, New York, on 12 acres of farmland and woods--the Millett Center for the Arts.

In the past year she has receive the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts (Millett is also a sculptor) from her long-time friend Yoko Ono, the Foundation of Contemporary Arts Award for Visual Arts, and the LAMBDA Pioneer Award for Literature. Veteran Feminists of America honored her last summer at a gala attended by Gloria Steinem, Susan Brownmiller, and other feminists.

The governor was signing the Minnesota bill to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and I arrived for the occasion in a polyester two-piece pantsuit -- daring for the time. My hair was de rigeur feminist: straight, long, parted down the middle and pulled sternly behind my neck. Since I couldn't find a sitter, I brought along my four-year-old daughter.

The notion of the amendment -- that my daughter and I and all females should have rights equal to men's under the U.S. Constitution -- was considered radical in 1972. And radical it was, at least in the original sense of the word, which is derived from the Latin radix, meaning "root."

Since equality under the law did, indeed, go straight to the root of our societal arrangement, it was profoundly upsetting to some people. For example, one state senator publicly accused us supporters of the amendment, ranged in the gallery above the senate chamber, of keeping "dirty houses" and hiding illegitimate (he used a different word) children under our beds. Ouch.

Across the nation, America's "second-wave" feminists -- so called because we succeeded the suffragists of the 1920s -- were moving into gear.

It was a time when help-wanted ads ran in either the male or the female section of the classifieds; when all TV anchors and reporters were male, as were virtually all attorneys, orchestra members, physicians, politicians, and heads of practically any organization you could name; when female grad school applicants -- including me -- hid their engagement rings; when married women had trouble getting their own credit cards. Even Joan Mondale and Muriel Humphrey were required to enter the Minneapolis Club by the back door.

In this environment, one of CLA's own, Kate Millett (English '56), rose to national prominence with her book, Sexual Politics, proposing that the situation was both oppressive and political.

She argued that the power differential between the sexes was the prototype for all political oppression, and called for a cultural revolution, a movement "toward freedom from rank or prescriptive role, sexual or otherwise."

Sexual Politics, published in 1970, contributed theoretical firepower to the incipient women's movement. It's hard to exaggerate the book's importance -- Doubleday cited it as one of the ten most important books it published in the century. Millett's portrait appeared on the cover of Time.

Just two years after Sexual Politics appeared, the discipline of women's studies was established at the University of Minnesota, Kate Millett's alma mater.

Accordingly, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Department of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies, CLA honors its daughter, Kate Millett.

Disruptive thinking is the essential ingredient in any kind of innovation. It is something we foster in CLA.
By James A. Parente, Jr., Dean

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=379279
379279

I have been struck recently by frequent references to the idea of disruptive innovation -- that is, new and unexpected technology that is places earlier technology, and disturbs the market and existing values.

Such disruption often provides a critical advantage that enables a new process or technology to thrive. Firms too comfortable with the practices of the past, or unable to adapt or develop creatively and efficiently in new directions, sometimes fail because of the disjuncture between their business practices and the changing market.

Education, like technology, thrives on disruption. Certainly students need to cultivate basic skills to prepare for future personal and economic success. But they also need time for creative play -- disruptive thinking -- in order to develop intellectually. To think disruptively is to challenge accepted ways of thinking, explore new paths, learn from failure, and, ultimately, devise solutions to vexing problems.

Disruptive thinking is the essential ingredient in any kind of innovation. It is something we foster in CLA. In many, perhaps even most, of their courses, CLA students are required to identify their core beliefs, take a stand on an issue, argue persuasively both sides of a case, and ultimately take the intellectual risk necessary to effect a new mode of thinking and acting.

In this issue of Reach, we celebrate three eminent CLA exemplars of disruptive thinking. In each case, their bold, disruptive thinking engendered passionate debates and left a lasting mark on contemporary American society and the world.

» Professor Emeritus David Noble, whose most recent book appeared this year, is internationally renowned not only for his role in creating the field of American studies, but even more importantly, for challenging historians' belief in American exceptionalism--America's imagined role as the leading global propagator of liberty and justice

» CLA alumna Kate Millett, who made an intellectual journey from literary studies to the women's liberation movement, in 1970 wrote the foundational and productively disruptive work, Sexual Politics.

» Alumnus Richard Sandor has challenged established approaches to environmental degradation and global warming by devising market-based solutions to control acid rain and carbon emissions. As you will see in their stories, and on virtually every page of this issue of Reach, disruptive thinking is very much alive today among our faculty, students, and alumni.

As we begin the New Year, let us celebrate and recommit ourselves to the liberal arts and the disruptive thinking that transforms the world through actions grounded in visionary ideas.

"If you pursue only those goals you know you're really, really likely to achieve, you live like an iceberg with the vast majority of yourself undiscovered and unknowable, even to yourself. Failure is the tool that we use to demarcate the edges of our abilities.

Go and find out empirically what you can and what you can't do. Don't leave the marking of those borders to speculation—to yours, or your friends', or your parents'. Go find out ... . It's all electives now, homey."

An item in the Field of Inquiry section in the Fall 2011 issue misstated the rank of CLA's Department of Economics among U.S. Nobel-Prize-winning public research universities. It ranks fifth, not second.

37458
Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:14:25 -0600In praise of play

By James A. Parente, Jr., Dean

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=359472
359472

James A. Parente, Jr., Dean, College of Liberal ArtsPhoto by Kelly MacWilliams

Philosophy is a serious business—seemingly abstruse and humorless. Yet much philosophical thinking has been born of humor and the creative power of play. Democritus, arguably the first philosopher of science, was known for his propensity for laughter, and his serious sense of play resulted in some remarkable discoveries.

In that vein we introduce this summer's Reach with a jocular cover as an entrée into the creativity of our faculty, students and alumni.

Current public discussion about higher education has lost sight of the "serious play" of discovery and innovation traditionally stimulated by universities. In the course of this year's intense presidential campaign, higher education itself has become, not only a topic, but also a target for divisive debate.

Most Americans agree about the demonstrated economic benefits of a college degree, but concerns about cost and restricted job opportunities are causing students and their families to question the value of the experience.

DemocritusBy Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1628

Such skepticism is understandable. The cost of an undergraduate education continues to rise, especially at public institutions whose states have disinvested in this public good. Students and their families rightly ask for data about job placement for graduates across several fields before choosing a course of study. These questions are not new. The link between an academic program and a career has always been implicit in higher education. Medieval universities were founded to train lawyers, physicians, and theologians, and Renaissance universities construed training in the liberal arts, the studium humanitatis, to be in the service of the state.

The link between career and the liberal arts can be less obvious than the link between career and the study of, say, business or engineering. Yet we know that the liberal arts can and do lead their students to many different paths--ranging from business, law, and the health sciences to journalism and the fine arts.

Alumni from diverse professions repeatedly tell me that, above all, the liberal arts challenged them to think. Critical thinking can be acquired, of course, without the study of the liberal arts, but it's the questions that the liberal arts ask, rather than the thinking itself, that have special significance. Only in the liberal arts are questions raised about the meaning of life, the nature of social, political, and economic order, and the variety of the human experience and our beliefs.

It is by virtue of their diversity that the liberal arts can provide a context for discerning connections between seemingly distinct spheres of knowledge. The liberal arts have thrived for centuries because of their capacity to entertain fundamental questions that elude definitive response, to force connections between disparate fields, and to train generations of students to use both reason and imagination to create with confidence and verve.

In this issue of Reach you will read about exciting connections that faculty and students in our college are drawing between science and the humanities. You will see how in CLA we not only do science, we interrogate the scientific method and its assumptions; and you'll see how we are deciphering and reconstructing ancient papyri, restoring the living language of the Ojibwe people, and exploring the dynamics of molecular structures through dance—all this using the latest scientific techniques.

Summer is the season for reflecting and preparing for the busy fall ahead. It is also the season of play. I encourage you to animate your summer with "serious play"--the imaginative exploration of the self and the world for which the liberal arts have prepared you.

The psychologist Erik H. Erikson wrote, "The playing adult steps sideward into another reality." In preparing to meet both our private challenges, and—in this election year—those of our global society, the power to envision and create new realities is certainly one to exercise and cherish.

37748|37457
Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:57:35 -0600On a personal note

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=358818
358818

What do CLA grads do with their liberal arts degrees? Win Academy Awards with George Clooney! Advance science by way of neurobiology and forensic pathology. Advise the European Union on defense. Advise folks on their investments. Build houses. Become university presidents. Write books for children, books about werewolves.

1950s - 60s

Sandra McLeod Humphrey, B.A. '58, psychology, M.A. '63, counseling psychology, has retired from clinical psychology to write books about personal values for middle-grade children and young adults. She has received the National Character Education Center's Award for Exemplary Leadership in Ethics Education and the 2005 Helen Keating Ott Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature. Her latest book is They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women who Made a Difference.

Don Brown, B.A. '58, speech/communications, retired from National City Bank in 1996, but recently returned to managing investment portfolios as a solo practitioner. He previously served as president of C. H. Brown Company, a Minneapolis-based investment advisory firm. If his name sounds familiar, it may be from his 30 years' announcing for the Gopher Track Program; he'd been the captain of the U's track/cross-country team, and a three-time letter winner. He was recently elected to the St. Louis Park High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

Richard Buys

Richard Buys, B.A. '62, geography, M.S. '78 (Troy State University), is a senior advisory officer to the European Center for Defense, Security and Environment. In May, in Budapest, he delivered the keynote address at the European Defense Agency-sponsored conference, "Sustainable Energy for European Union Emergency Management," on "Energy in the Context of the Environment, Past and Present." Earlier this year he moderated a panel discussion on eco-defense at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. A former U.S. Air Force pilot, he served NATO for 10 years in roles related to aviation. He lives in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Robert Berdahl, Ph.D. '65, history, is interim president of the University of Oregon. He had been the president of the Association of American Universities, and was previously president of the University of Texas at Austin, and chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.

1970s

Rodney Erickson

Rodney A. Erickson, B.A. '68, M.A. '70, Ph.D. '73 (University of Washington), geography, is the new president of The Pennsylvania State University. He previously served as the Penn State's executive vice president and provost.

Edward Cleary, B.A. '74, political science, J.D. '77, was appointed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Since 2002 he has been assistant chief judge for the Second Judicial District; for the previous 20 he'd practiced law concentrating on civil and criminal defense litigation, and was an assistant public defender for Ramsey County. He's the author of Beyond the Burning Cross: A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First Amendment, on R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the case he brought to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992.

Janis C. Amatuzio, B.S. '73, chemistry, B.A., Italian, M.D. '77, recently retired as county coroner and forensic pathologist for Anoka County, Minnesota. The author of Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living from a Forensic Pathologist, she is an advocate for the compassionate practice of forensic medicine.

Stephen Paulus, B.A. '71, M.A. '76, Ph.D. '78, music, premiered The Shoemaker, a new church opera based on a Tolstoy story, which he composed and for which English Professor Emeritus Michael Dennis Browne wrote the libretto. Philip Brunelle conducted, and Gary Gisselman directed both the Plymouth Congregational Church and St. Olaf College performances.

Amy Sabrina Myers

Amy Sabrina Myers, B.F.A., '79, studio art, created a tribute to the late Minnesota Governor Elmer L. Anderson: a series of painted and glazed earthenware medallions displayed at the Princeton, Minn., public library. The project was supported by Minnesota's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Myers' work is represented in collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota Historical Society, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ceridian Corporation and US Bank, among others. Download the commemorative booklet (PDF)

1980s

Jim BurkeTop photo by Kelly MacWilliams

Jim Burke, B.A. '82, speech communication--as far as we know, he's CLA's first Academy Award-winner. The Descendants, which he produced, won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, and was nominated in four other categories--best picture, actor, director, and best editing. The film also won the Golden Globe's Best Drama award; in accepting, Burke called George Clooney "our quarterback" (see z.umn.edu/burkegolden). In 2011 Burke returned to campus to talk with students about his CLA experience and making movies. See z.umn.edu/burke.

E.J. (Jane) Westlake, B.A. '85, theater arts and business, received tenure at the University of Michigan in the Department of Theatre and Drama. This winter she will teach American drama at the University of Bucharest, Romania, as a Fulbright grantee.

Marie Zhuikov, B.A. '86, journalism, M.A. '05, health journalism, has published Eye of the Wolf, which she describes as "not your average werewolf story." The novel is set on Isle Royale in 1984, where the wolves are in danger of dying out; the main character is a U of M student.

Steven Chew, Ph.D. '86, psychology, was named 2011 U.S. Professor of the Year for Master's Universities and Colleges by the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching, in the only national program to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring. He is the chair of the psychology department at Stamford College, Birmingham, Alabama.

Judy Chartrand

Judy Chartrand, M.A. '86, Ph.D. '89, psychology, is a co-author of Now You're Thinking. A book about critical thinking for good decision-making, it is a slender volume that carries heavyweight endorsements from people like Daniel Pink, Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard and Arne Carlson--all part of a campaign to give books to children from military families (12,000 provided last year). Read more at: z.umn.edu/marines.

Jeff Danberry, B.E.S. '86, was persuaded by his daughter to retire from retirement and join her in forming Danberry Building Corp., an architectural, design-and-build firm in Tonka Bay, Minnesota.

Michael Nordskog, B.A. '88, geography, won a Minnesota Book Award, a Midwest Book Award, and the David Stanley Gebhard Award from the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians with The Opposite of Cold: The Northwoods Finnish Sauna Tradition. An attorney, writer, and editor, he lives in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

1990s

Linda Wilbrecht

Linda Wilbrecht, B.A. '95, cultural studies and comparative literature, Ph.D (The Rockefeller University), received a presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). An assistant professor of neurobiology, she runs her own lab at the Gallo Center at the University of California, San Francisco, where her group studies the effects of drug use on the development of neural circuits. She recently wrote us crediting Dr. Harvey Sarles, her cultural studies adviser, "[for helping] me develop an interest in how experience impacts how we behave and who we become. Twenty years later, I am still investigating that same issue, just now at a cellular and synaptic level. He helped me identify the question I wanted to answer and the tools to go out and obtain the technical skills to answer my question."

George Eaton, M.A. '90, history, has retired from active duty in the U.S. Army and is now an Army historian. He lives in Davenport, Iowa, and recently wrote us about his role in the School of Music's Britten Peace Project there (see story on page 4). He filled in for conductor Mark Russell Smith at the prerecital talk with his own talk on World War I, trench warfare, and the impact of the trench experience on Wilfred Owen and his poetry. He subsequently received an inquiry about giving the same talk when the Portland Symphony performs the work.

Patrick Mendis, Ph.D. '90, geography and applied economics, has published his sixth book, Commercial Providence: The Secret Destiny of the American Empire. An affiliate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University and a senior fellow of the Osgood Center for International Studies, his many previous roles range from U.S. State Department diplomat to NATO military professor, to consulting economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, to U of M professor.

2000s

Toni Damico

Toni (Antonia) Damico, B.A. '11, speech communication, who now lives in Denver, is the new face of Angela King Designs' Go Wild! Wear, a costume supplier for professional sports cheerleaders.

Tyrel Nelson, B.A. '03, journalism and Spanish studies, has published his third book, Those Darn Stripes, a collection of stories about his relationship with his father. He lives in Minneapolis.

Jacob Perkins and Aayush Chandan, both B.F.A. '11, acting, had roles in last winter's Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., and are featured in several of its upcoming productions.

Nicole (Fletcher) Meyer, B.A. '06, strategic communication and art, has launched a project she's calculated will take 27 years to complete: design a logo for each of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. Check out her website to see if there's one yet for your favorite pond: at branding10000lakes.com. Nicole's day job is as a graphic designer at Periscope, in Minneapolis.

37460
Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:18:06 -0600The lives they led

In memory

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=358797
358797

Photo by Don Getsug, courtesy the Liebling family

Jerome Liebling, founder of CLA's film and photography program, died July 27, in Northampton, Massachusetts, at 87. His pioneering photographs of urban life, politicians, and ordinary people are in the collections of, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Motivated by the lack of emphasis on photography in academe, he came to CLA in 1949 to establish its first film and photography program. In 1969 he moved to Hampshire College, Amherst, did the same thing there, and exercised profound influence on a generation of filmmakers, including Ken Burns. He produced award-winning documentaries with his CLA colleague, Allen Downs, and wrote six books, among them The Minnesota Photographs 1949-1969, The Face of Minneapolis, and The People, Yes, co-authored with Burns.

Armand Renaud, professor emeritus of French, died February 16, at his home in Minneapolis. He was 93. Renaud earned his Ph.D. at Yale, joined the CLA faculty in 1957, and was named chair of the Department of Romance Languages in 1963. There he added a Portuguese major and expanded the Italian program, introduced courses on Existentialism, the Theatre of the Absurd, Francophone African writers, and deconstructionism. For decades he and his wife Madeleine, who taught French at Northrop Collegiate School (which later merged with Blake), were influential in the Twin Cities French community. They also had a strong commitment to the university. Armand established a memorial to Madeleine after she died; it now bears the name of both of them: the Madeleine and Armand Renaud Fellowship.

Janet Spector, associate professor of gender studies and American archaeology, died of breast cancer September 13 at her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was 66. Her 1993 book, What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village, emerged from her frustration with traditional archaeological methods, and represented both a new feminist scholarship
and sensitivity to Native American culture. Spector earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked in the feminist and antiwar movements in the 1970s, and in 1973 came to CLA, where she helped found and later chaired what became the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and was a founder of the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies. In 1992 she was named assistant provost; in that role she chaired the U's Commission on Women. She retired in 1998.

Alice Grant, Swahili instructor, died December 3 in Minneapolis, at 88. A teacher of creative writing and English literature at Howard University, Washington, D.C., from 1952 too 1962, she encouraged Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land, and officed with Toni Morrison. Morrison named the title character of her book, Sula, for Grant—"Alice" sounded backward. Grant, Morrison, and their colleague Lettie Austin co-authored the first ESL textbook. Grant was a member of the first cohort of Peace Corps instructors, and when she went to Lincoln University, Oxford, Pa., to teach English and creative writing, she directed its center for African refugees and mentored future leaders of several African countries. She came to the U in 1969 to teach Swahili and help establish a teacher-training program, and later moved to Jacksonville, Fla., where she taught at Florida State College, learned Haitian Creole and did relief work in Haiti. She returned to Minnesota when she retired in 1990.

Marilyn Chelstrom, B.A. '50, political science, died January 26. She worked for 16 years for the Taft Institute for Government, an organization founded to expand and improve political participation in the United States, and was its executive president from 1978 to 1988. A tribute to her leadership of a Taft Institute program to improve teacher education in government and politics was entered into the Congressional Record. She was the author of A Tribute to Outstanding Minnesota Women, and Political Parties, Two-Party Government and Democracy in the United States. A long-time University of Minnesota volunteer, she served on the board of the Alumni Association's New York Area Chapter, and as the Northeast USA representative to the UMAA National Board of Directors. She was a member of the U's President's Club of donors, and a recipient of the University of Minnesota Alumni Service Award and CLA's Alumni of Notable Achievement Award.

Joseph Plumbo, B.A. '57, history and political science, died January 28 in St. Paul, at 81. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, went on to serve in the Naval Reserves, and worked at Unisys. He was a lifelong member of the Italian-American Marconi Club. He was a supporter of CLA; according to his wife, Shirley, "he sure loved that school."

Helen Rice, B.A. '45, sociology, died April 2, in Minneapolis, from complications from surgery. She was 89. As a new CLA grad she headed to Broadway to make it as a singer—and succeeded. She sang in Wonderful Town starring Rosalind Russell, and was in the chorus and an understudy in Kiss Me Kate. Returning to Minnesota, she tutored voice students, and sang in operas and operettas and as a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Civic Orchestra, and other organizations. She was the chief soloist at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church.

I have a friend who is a confirmed pessimist. She just can't help fretting—and waiting for the next shoe to drop. Call me a Pollyanna, but I can't help looking for ways to make things better, and I don't mean shopping for a new pair of shoes.

I know these are challenging times. But there are bright spots all around us, beginning right here on campus, a place where dreams take root and blossom into bright new beginnings every day.

One of my favorite rites of spring is the unceasing procession of students being recognized for their accomplishments. These accomplishments grow out of talent, promise, and determination nurtured by opportunities. In CLA, those opportunities are all about connection. They include programs that pair students with faculty for research and mentoring, with communities for outreach and service, with organizations for internships, and with alumni and donors for the support to make it all happen.

Internships can transform students' lives

In just the last few days, I've heard students fairly gush about their first research experience with a faculty mentor (through our Undergraduate Research Opportunity program); about the inestimable value of their internships; and about the many rewards of working with people in communities (through our Community Service-Learning Center).

These experiences are truly transformational. Not only do students grow intellectually, they also come to see more clearly the world beyond their classrooms. They connect with the needs and concerns of communities. They become more creative and thoughtful citizens.

I recently returned pretty jazzed up from the annual reception for recipients of CLA's internship awards. I was reminded of how accomplished our students are--and how vast their need for support. And I thought about all the talent that might remain untapped if that support isn't there.

You can help open doors

It's no secret that internships are invaluable. They open doors to employment after graduation. They help students make career choices. They connect the classroom experience to real-world work environments that are laboratories for experiential learning. But far too many students seeking internships can't afford to spend ten or more hours a week working without compensation. Many internships are unpaid—and only a lucky few receive CLA awards of roughly $1,200-$1,500 for a semester.

But the rewards of internships don't stop with the students. Talk to community hosts and partners, and you'll see what I mean. "It gives us hope for a better world," said one. Said another, "They brought their own skills and abilities and found a place to share them. They help me think outside the box."

"Interns who work as mentors to youth widen their own horizons; and they show our young participants what is possible for them, too, and give them an incentive to persist through obstacles." "We love them. They are professional, fun, and dependable." "It's been a pleasure! We truly could not provide the services that we do with out our interns."

So how can you be a part of this extraordinary life skill-building experience for our students?

Here's how you can help:

If you are in a position to offer an internship in your work place, please send me an email or a give me a call. I'll connect you with the appropriate people to help determine whether a match can be made.

Contribute $1,200 or more to our CLA internship fund (#2341) so that we can offer more paid internships to our students.

If you have any questions at all, or want to know more about how you can support our students, please give me a call at 612-625-5541 or email me at hicks002@umn.edu. Thank you! Our students thank you!

Alan Bjerga '98, author of the new Endless Appetites, covers agricultural policy for Bloomberg News. He was interviewed by Giovanna Dell'Orto, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

AB: I grew up on a farm just south of the town of Motley. We had 80 acres of sheep, some clover and alfalfa, and I was from the start a pretty sorry excuse for a farm kid. I got my master's in mass communication from the University of Minnesota. I was the managing editor of the Minnesota Daily, and say proudly that we added back good coverage of extension and agricultural services. It wasn't until I got to Washington that I realized that a rural Minnesota background is not typical in the Washington press. An education at a place like the U, which has an urban campus and yet an agricultural mission, is not a common experience.

GD: In your vast travels, what experiences have really stayed with you?

AB: The genesis for [the book] went back to 2008 in Ethiopia, when I was tracking a U.S. food aid shipment actually including foods grown on a farm in North Dakota and some food from Minnesota as well. They ended up taking six months to get to this village. And seeing just the logistical difficulty of getting nutrition that people need to live when they are suffering, was a really striking experience that was the original idea for what became this book. These things reverberate, and not just in communities, but around the world. You get a sense of the connections that people at different levels of the food chain have, and the collective responsibility they all have in terms of feeding the world.

GD: [Regarding] world hunger, you place quite a lot of faith in the market.

AB: I would argue that not being able to feed everyone on Earth is a market failure. Clearly, everyone on Earth demands food, yet not everyone is receiving food. So how does one deal with that? Markets have a great power that command-and-control-decisions, top-down decisions from governments do not. This is about producers and consumers coming together and meeting the needs of one another. I'm not trying to argue for an unfettered, unregulated free-for-all market where there's no social conscience and no desire to reach any sort of a goal. I think we're looking for a market in which the infrastructure is built properly and the societal goals are clear so the marketplace has an idea of what we are trying to achieve.

GD: Another issue is the environment.

AB: When you look at agriculture from a pure production standpoint—do we have the technology, land, and ability to feed seven billion people?—the answer is yes. It's a distribution failure, a market failure. The question is, what are you doing to this planet to keep it sustainably growing this food to feed these people? That leads to some very difficult questions about the role of technology, how to integrate different farming practices, what consumer habits and nutrition patterns should and shouldn't be encouraged, in terms of what will most effectively feed people in a sustainable manner. There is capacity. The question becomes one of will.

GD: You say the problem is solvable if everyone pulls their own weight—government, farmers, market, and consumers.

AB: Let's start with the markets—commodities traders and such. You see traders very concerned about volatility. It's not very comfortable to see corn prices go up or down $2 a bushel in a month. But you might be surprised at the openness there can be to doing some things differently as [everyone] looks at the social consequences of their own actions.

Farmers are afraid of growing for a surplus and then [because of events elsewhere in the world] having no market. But with more market information, better data, better infrastructure, you have examples like the Nicaraguan farmer who was growing potatoes but now he's growing organic cabbage because he sees potential in that. That's the marketplace at work.

Getting to governments, it's a matter of looking at the agenda and taking a look at the consequences of actions. We had this big wave of financial deregulation and now you're seeing the consequences of that. You also have a huge tendency, from governments and institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, to cut back on their investment in world agriculture. I believe about a quarter of the World Bank's portfolio 30 years ago was for agriculture. By the mid-2000s it was about 4 percent. Now that's starting to rebound.

I think there is a lot of promise when you see consumers paying a lot more attention to where and how their food is grown. But I would urge people not to be rigid. There are times when imported products sent from developing countries that have a comparative advantage agriculturally can be helpful in domestic markets, in places like the United States. There should be that sort of global awareness, of making sure that farmers around the world have the market and the price to stimulate the production and infrastructure development that's needed to create that robust food system worldwide.

GD: What has kept you so upbeat?

AB: I don't see why one wouldn't want to be positive or optimistic. You certainly can't go through life underestimating the problems of the world, but there has been progress on this planet. And optimism and positivity is a choice, and we have so many days on this planet, why not make them count?

The incredible power of liberal arts thinkers: Did you know they fuel discovery and innovation between disparate fields—including science and technology?

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=356383
356383

The World of Phi-Sci

So an evolutionary biologist, a philosopher, and a yeast cell walked into a bar.

You think I'm making this up, don't you? Actually, the only made-up part is the bar.

The biologist and the philosopher really did get together—in truth, there were
several of them—but it was in a lecture hall, not a bar, and yeast cells really did perform some fascinating gyrations for them—in a laboratory. So fascinating, and so significant, was the performance that it made headlines in newspapers and scientific journals around the world. (See for yourself online—we'll tell you how later.)

This issue of Reach is about what can happen when we use both liberal arts and scientific thinking to look at the world. Like when flint hits steel, sparks fly. We get new insights. Solutions. Breakthroughs!

- Mary Pattock, editor

Where Phi met Sci (in the room next door)

Mixing scientific and liberal arts thinking lets scientists and philosophers ask the big questions that lead to path-breaking science—and philosophy. Read more

Breaking into thought

Science advances by way of approximations, errors and biases—not despite them. This is one of William Wimsatt's iconoclastic opinions.Wimsatt holds one of CLA's Winton Chair Visiting Professorships. Read more

By Mary Pattock
Science advances by way of approximations, errors and biases—not despite them. This is one of William Wimsatt's iconoclastic opinions.

Wimsatt is a philosopher of biology, a scholar of global prominence. He holds CLA's Winton Chair Visiting Professorship, which encourages research and creative work that challenge established patterns of thought; he is also a member of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. His long-time academic home is the University of Chicago.

The name Wimsatt is synonymous with the philosophy for limited beings, a school of thought that addresses the phenomenon of error-prone human beings trying to understand a messy—in fact, infinitely complex—world.

The title of his most recent book provides a clue to a fundamentally practical approach—Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality (Harvard, 2007). In it he maintains that thinkers must root their work in real-world experience, so their theories will apply not only in principle, but also in practice.

Since his arrival at CLA in 2010, he's taught graduate and undergraduate courses and seminars on the philosophy of science, and has led discussions of the Biology Interest Group (BIG), a project of the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science.

Next fall he will collaborate with faculty in the College of Science and Engineering on a seminar on cultural and technical evolution, where he plans to integrate concepts from evolutionary developmental biology with those of cultural evolution.

"I have been proud to be associated with the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science over the last several years," he says. "MCPS continues to reflect its illustrious origin as the first center for philosophy and science in the U.S. and I have found it particularly valuable to participate in BIG, where we discuss and debate aspects of philosophy and biology. MCPS resonates with my orientation in the philosophy of science."
Watch Wimsatt interview at z.umn.edu/wimsatt

Two thousand years ago (give or take a few), a resident of Oxyrhynchus tossed a piece of papyrus onto the town's trash heap. There it lay, parched by the Egyptian climate, preserved for posterity.

Now, University of Minnesota researchers are employing technology and the discerning eyes of tens of thousands of volunteers around the world to decipher texts salvaged from that ancient trash pile.

The modern chapter of this exceedingly long story began in 1896 when British archaeologists discovered the Oxyrhynchus rubbish mounds. The find was at first unimpressive—then dazzling. It included some of the earliest copies of the New Testament, fragments of the Gospel of Thomas and other non-canonical Christian and Jewish theological writings, poems of Pindar and fragments from Sappho, parts of lost plays of Sophocles, the oldest diagrams of Euclid's Elements, a life of Euripides...as well as private letters, business contracts, tax documents, census returns, even grocery receipts for dates and olives.

Nita Krevans, Classics scholarPhoto by Lisa Miller

"It's every kind of writing you can imagine," says Nita Krevans, a professor in the CLA's Department of Classical and Near-Eastern Studies and the project's co-principal investigator along with Philip Sellew, whose expertise includes early Greek and Coptic Christian texts that have been preserved on papyrus. "And it's material we don't have for most other locations from this period."

The documents may be mostly small fragments, but they are keys to vast untapped knowledge about Egyptian life from the third century BCE to the eighth century CE. Most were penned during the first and second centuries CE; they were written primarily in Ancient Greek, Egypt's official language after Alexander's conquest in 332 BCE.

So this is a story of how a city dump turned out to be an unequalled archive of ancient life and times. Of how it yielded comprehensive records of a large and prosperous city that today lies buried under the modern town of el-Bahnasa, and writings by some of the ancient world's greatest artists, scholars, and religious writers. And of how modern-day CLA scholars are part of this historic exploration.

A staggering task

After a fair bit of digging it became apparent that the very richness of the find presented a major problem. The fragments number around a half million; many are faded and torn, the antique ink abraded. In more than a century since they were discovered, only about 1 percent have been transcribed and published. While modern scholars are certainly able to read the Greek texts, even sifting through the mounds is a challenge of staggering proportion.

But a new project, Ancient Lives, is speeding up that glacial pace. It's an international, interdisciplinary collaboration involving the Egypt Exploration Society, which owns the Oxyrhynchus papyri collection; Oxford University Department of Physics, which stores it; and two U of M colleges —CLA via the Department of Classical and Near-Eastern Studies, and the College of Science and Engineering, which are developing technology to help translate it.

On the Ancient Lives website you can find images of hundreds of thousands of the fragments and an invitation to transcribe them by matching handwritten letters to the Greek characters that appear in a key at the bottom of the screen.

Citizen scientists

Ancient Lives grew out of Galaxy Zoo, a project launched in 2007 to recruit amateur science enthusiasts to help identify galaxies from images posted on the website.

Lucy Fortson, astrophysicistPhoto by Lisa Miller

Lucy Fortson, associate professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Science and Engineering, was involved with that project from its early days. "Galaxy Zoo was such a huge success that we realized there were many other opportunities to use the same process with other fields," she says.

That realization grew into Zooniverse, a Web portal that invites citizen scientists to contribute to a whole range of endeavors. For example, Zooniverse volunteers scour images of the skies for distant planets, model climate change using historic ship logs, and translate the songs of whales.

Ancient Lives joined Zooniverse last summer. Volunteers—there are already 120,000 of them, says Krevans—pore over the online papyrus images, matching individual letters to the provided set of Ancient Greek characters. "The large majority are amateurs," she says. "Many don't even read Greek. It's a pattern-matching exercise—you just match the shapes."

Fragments range from textbook-quality treatises penned by professional scribes to nearly illegible cursive—replete with misspellings—scrawled by students writing home from school. "Handwriting is notoriously difficult," says Fortson. Indeed, identifying those shapes can be tricky—and human eyes still do a better job of it than computers.

As many as 70 to 100 volunteers may work on a single fragment. But that is just the first step in the translation process. Behind the scenes, Fortson and Anne-Francoise Lamblin from the U of M's Minnesota Supercomputing Institute are developing software to analyze the volunteers' findings and create a master transcription based on the most common responses from each volunteer transcriber.

They hope to refine the software so it can "learn" and adapt—for example, recognize the most reliable volunteers and give greater weight to their transcriptions. Eventually, software might even learn enough about the rules of the texts to fill in gaps with the most likely missing letters.

Early tests indicate that the volunteer transcribers are doing an impressive job, producing transcriptions that agree with experts about 80 percent of the time. Fortson expects to nudge that number closer to 90 percent as the software is tweaked.

Smart as the software may be, however, it by no means replaces classics scholars, so CLA's Perale and his counterparts in Oxford take over where the software leaves off. They review the consensus transcriptions, translate the text, interpret it, and determine which scraps are worthy of publication. "We want to get information on the 99 percent of the collection that has not been published so far," he says.

Students are part of the team. Front, left to right: Ryan Seaberg and Rachael Cullick, Ph.D. candidates in Classics, are research assistants through the Minnesota Futures grant. Theresa Chresand (right), a sophomore honors student majoring in Greek and Latin, did a directed study on the project and is working on the project this summer through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. All three are supervised by Marco Perale (not pictured). Behind them: Lucy Fortson and Nita Krevans.Photo by Lisa Miller

The project is fast gaining fans. When Theresa Chresand, a sophomore Greek major, learned about it, she immediately got hooked, now spends a lot of her free time on Ancient Lives, and has even recruited friends to join her. "Just being able to interact with the fragments has been really interesting and has helped my Greek," Chresand says. "I had no idea what papyrology was until I got involved in the project." Now she's considering it as a career option.

Meanwhile, as the Minnesota computer science team continues to refine the software, collaborators in Oxford continue to upload new images. And Perale is at work reviewing transcriptions and working on the Ancient Lives website, answering users' questions and writing a blog that involves active volunteers in the conversation.

Perale arrived at CLA in September, courtesy of a two-year Minnesota Futures Research Grant of which Fortson is the principal investigator. (Minnesota Futures is a U of M program that provides opportunities for researchers to cross disciplinary and professional boundaries.) Perale's office in Nicholson Hall is still mostly unadorned, save for a bookshelf lined with the 76 volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri that have been published to date. The first one was published in 1898, the most recent just last year. Soon, he hopes, new volumes will be released, filled with translations of lost comedies from ancient playwrights and personal letters from people whose names we'll never know.

"Here we have 500,000 documents that are waiting to be transcribed and analyzed, and they hold a very big potential," Perale says. With help from around the world, he's making progress—letter by letter, word by word. "A word," Perale says, "tells a lot."

Kirsten Weir is a science writer and editor based in Minneapolis. She has written for Discover, Salon, Psychology Today, and the American Psychological Association.

37536|37457
Wed, 16 May 2012 12:16:16 -0600Serving up good news about foodhttp://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=356379
356379

Eating healthy—in schools and spaceships
By Greg Breining

Until a recent uplifting and much ballyhooed experiment, Traci Mann had spent years studying what might be termed the frailty of human nature. "I say I study self-control," says the associate professor of psychology.

Perhaps, more accurately, loss of control.

Mann's research had demonstrated time and again that people confronting a temptation would fail. Usually she studied dieters trying to stick to a diet. They would lose weight, only to gain it all back, and more. Environmental cues would cause them to eat when they tried not to. Restricting calories caused chronic psychological stress and cortisol production—two factors known to cause weight gain.

"I'm on the record telling people they shouldn't diet, that it doesn't work, and if you try to diet you're sort of setting yourself up to fail," she says.

In fact, her entire outlook on controlling food intake got quite pessimistic. "After studying this for 10 years, I saw that nearly everything we've learned is just another piece of bad news for dieters," says Mann. Even her family was getting tired of it. "My mom kept saying, are you ever going to learn any good news?

"It was becoming increasingly clear there was never going to be any good news."

But now, Mann has found something to cheer about when it comes to eating and human behavior.

In a much publicized study, Mann and four University of Minnesota colleagues have found a sly way to get kids to eat more vegetables. And that work has led to another study of overcoming picky eating—how to get astronauts to eat more while they're in space. Both studies are examples of the sort of scientific research being done in CLA.

After learning that shoppers who took grocery carts with a section marked "produce" did indeed buy more produce, the researchers decided to try a similar trick to get schoolchildren to take more vegetables. They pasted photos of vegetables in the lunch tray compartments, hoping to suggest to kids that their friends might put vegetables in those compartments and that they should too.

It worked. On the day the photographic lunch trays showed up at a Richfield, Minn., elementary school, the number of kids taking green beans more than doubled, from 6 percent on a normal day to more than 14 percent. And the number taking carrots tripled, from 12 percent to more than 36 percent.

That's still far short of all the kids who should be eating vegetables. But it happened without nagging. "Kids don't want to do what they're told to do," says Mann. "They just want to do what they think their friends are doing. I think those pictures gave them the impression that this is what other kids do. Kids must be putting their carrots in that carrot section. And if that's what they're doing, I'm going to do it."

Best of all, the incentive cost hardly anything. "If we can get kids to eat more vegetables without lecturing them about the importance of vegetables, by just giving them the impression that this is what kids do? Perfect."

After that experience, Mann and some of her collaborators decided "on a whim" to pursue a project with NASA to work with another group of reluctant eaters—in this case, astronauts. "How do you not apply to NASA?" Mann asks. "That's so cool."

The problem: Astronauts lose weight, not because of weightlessness, apparently, but simply because they don't eat enough. That's not a problem for a couple of weeks, or even a month at the International Space Station. "But if you're going to Mars, and you're going to be gone for three years, that is a big deal," says Mann. "Our group is trying to come up with little strategies to get them to eat more."

They aren't looking at the quality of the food. "Believe me, people are working on that one." Instead, they are looking at other issues. First, astronauts might be sick of eating the same old, same old. And second, they're too stressed to have much of an appetite.

"They're so busy up there," says Mann, who recently attended a NASA conference. "There's so much to do. And their time is very regimented. One approach we're taking is whether by giving them more control over their eating, their food preparation, and what they eat, we're seeing if that would reduce their stress and increase their enjoyment of food."

Mann and colleagues are doing the "ground" study this year. They will induce stress in volunteers working in simulated space conditions and try to ascertain if allowing them to choose and prepare their own meals alleviates stress and improves appetites.

If the work shows promise, the next phase will be conducted on astronauts in the space station. "We really want these to work!" says Mann.

Indeed, the possibility of moving their food experiments to space has excited more than just the researchers. "My sons now approve of me," Mann says. "It was touch and go when I studied dieting. But now that astronauts are involved, everything's changed."

She's kidding, of course.

"Actually, they always really enjoyed coming to my lab because my lab is full of yummy food. My sons—they think science equals milkshakes. Which I love. That's what they should think."

Greg Breining has written for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly, and is the author of several books on nature and travel.

First, draw a mental image of a dictionary. Next, delete the line drawings inside. In fact, delete the pages and the cover, too. Give what is left magical powers to talk and conjure up thousands of images and insights into a disappearing culture.

You now have a pretty good understanding of the new online Ojibwe People's Dictionary, a technological marvel created by the Department of American Indian Studies and the Minnesota Historical Society.

The endeavor is important for its practical use; it also sets a world standard for how indigenous languages will be preserved in the future.

This innovative dictionary links to photos and videos of Ojibwe culture, plus up to 60,000 audio clips—from entry words to spoken sentences and paragraphs. It has more words than any previous Ojibwe dictionary, and includes a section explaining how this complex and exotic language is put together.

Project manager Brenda Child: "We are bringing together more than just a dictionary.Photo by Brady Willette

It will help preserve the language, and also help people learn Ojibwe and better understand Ojibwe culture, says Brenda Child, associate professor of American Studies and project manager for the dictionary.

"We're kind of comparing it to what people say about worrying about plant species, animal species, biodiversity. People believe that linguistic diversity is very important in world knowledge systems because with the loss of languages, so goes knowledge....[It] is a way to bring the language back in conversation. We're not interested in the language going away."

Ojibwe is one of the most widely spoken Native American languages. About 200,000 people identify as Ojibwe in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in Canada, and Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota in the United States.

But fewer and fewer are native speakers, and the language is in danger of dying. Those tens of thousands of speakers in the United States and Canada who live in the modern world want to adapt their language to describe it.

Project head John Nichols: "The whole crux of the project is listening to voices. They give it life."Photo by Brady Willette

The project began with a conversation Child had with colleagues at the Minnesota Historical Society and Professor of American Indian Studies John Nichols, author of the widely used A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. The time was ripe for this kind of major collaboration, they realized, because Minnesota's new Legacy Amendment provides resources for cultural projects.

"By the next summer we had funding and began working on this extraordinary dictionary," says Child. "With the legacy funds we were able to dig right in."

So far the dictionary researchers have incorporated the 7,000 entries of Nichols' printed dictionary. And they have used artifacts in the collection of the Historical Society to illustrate dictionary entries and extend the description of words into Ojibwe culture.

But here's the most critical task: interviewing and collecting audio clips from fluent Ojibwe speakers to capture vocabulary and grammar of a language in danger of vanishing as native speakers pass on.

Child, for example, grew up listening to her mother, aunts, uncles, and grandmother speaking the language. But "all of us, the generation that came after, our first language has been English," she says. "Many of our students never heard their tribal language until they came to the University of Minnesota."

Even in the early version of the dictionary now online (see http://z.umn.edu/ojibwe), you can look up a word in Ojibwe or English and link to an audio clip to hear the word spoken. In many cases, different speakers from different communities pronounce the word—differently. "The great thing about the dictionary is that you can hear several dialects," says Child.

One featured Ontario elder is still living the outdoor life of crafts, including trapping. Her contributions are particularly valuable because she uses the vernacular of the traditional lifestyle, a vocabulary gradually passing from everyday use. Says Child, "There are certain older things about the way she speaks the language because of her maintenance of these cultural activities that we don't hear in the communities here in Minnesota."

But there's a challenge beyond recording current and historic usages, and that is figuring out how to talk about modern-world phenomena. For example, how would one say "on the Internet" in Ojibwe?

Answering questions like that allows us to understand how Ojibwe might accommodate new things and concepts if the language is to live. In the process it opens a space in our English-word-filled brains to see the world through very different eyes.

And this is where the work of Michael Sullivan comes in. He's a graduate student in linguistics and one of the community language curators working on the Ojibwe People's Dictionary. "There are some great words we happen to uncover when persuading our elders to hypothesize what a certain word might be," he says. "The beauty of language is creativity."

Another is waasamoo-asabing. Waasamo usually means things that are gas or electric powered. Asab is a net. Waasamoo-asabing means "on the Internet."

"Call me biased or ethnocentric, but the language itself is so wonderfully and beautifully complex," Sullivan says. "Promoting Ojibwe is fun and makes people's heads spin. Even younger speakers are getting in on the fun."

In fact, Child says, dictionary researchers are seeking foundation grants to begin work on a children's dictionary that can be used in K-12 education and preschool immersion classes. "Our problem is we keep envisioning new things."

So far, the reaction of Ojibwe communities, especially among community elders, has been enthusiastic.

"If you look at the university and the historical society, there is a history of feeling like our community interests have often been ignored," says Child. "And if you look at a project like this—wow, the University of Minnesota is doing something really good—something useful, something timely, something important for Ojibwe community life here in Minnesota and beyond the borders of the state."

When young naturalist Charles Darwin peered with wonder at a coral reef, he saw what appeared to be a living, unified submarine city of sea life. A single, throbbing organism. But he knew it was really a teeming collection of individuals.

"Where are the individuals?" he asked.

The question was as philosophical as it was scientific.

Almost 175 years later, another young scientist, inspired by a lecture sponsored by CLA's Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, slid a picture of clumped snowflake-shaped yeast cells under the office door of a colleague. He had captioned it: "Which of these is the individual?"

Normal cells are genetically programmed to self-destruct when they become senescent, unnecessary, or unhealthy; this is called apoptosis. In the landmark Travisano Lab evolutionary experiment, dead yeast cells (the red and green ones above) were observed to cut other cells off from the "mother" organisms, producing new individuals.

As the center's director, Ken Waters knows that the link between science and philosophy is nearly as old as human thought itself.

He also knows that in the history of human thought, specialization has led to a divergence of philosophy and science into academic apples and oranges. His mission since taking the reins of the center in 1996 has been to connect philosophical and scientific inquiry at the University of Minnesota.

Central to that mission has been facilitating discussion groups in which philosophers discuss science with scientists, and scientists discuss philosophy with philosophers.

They address topics like the influence of biology on political ideology, the explanatory power of genomics, the concept of a living fossil, and the evolution of culture.

They meet weekly, routinely, and passionately--and the results are combustible.

Take the case of that young scientist with the "snowflake" images, William Ratcliff, a postdoc research fellow in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, in the College of Biological Sciences. Inspired at the center by a lecture on evolution and biological cooperation and conflict, he and his mentor, evolutionary biologist Michael Travisano, carried out an experiment aimed at investigating how--many, many millions of years ago--single-celled life became multicellular, individual organisms.

"High school students could do this experiment," says Travisano. "It could have been done 100 years ago!"

Despite the fact that the experiment was probably one of the simplest biological experiments in history, it might turn out to be one of the most important.

"Their experiment was as philosophically important as it was biologically important," said Waters. "It raised new questions about how we should conceive of organisms and offered a new approach for answering them."

Where the thinking is BIG

Why mix scientific and liberal arts thinking?

"To be able to ask the big questions," answers evolutionary and plant population biologist
Ruth Shaw, a frequent participant in the Biology Interest Group, or BIG, one of the discussion groups that meets under the center's interdisciplinary umbrella. "Answering big questions can lead to path-breaking science. What Mike and Will did was to take a different perspective on biological life, do an experiment, and learn from it. We often have to do something simple to learn something important."

"It's all about the questions," says historian of biology Mark Borrello, another BIG participant.

"When we come to BIG," he says, "this kind of interaction and collaboration is what the academy is truly about--for me it spills over into my teaching. I can 'walk' this kind of thinking into the classroom and give students a perspective that they would not have otherwise received." Alisha Fujita, an undergraduate premed student and BIG participant, agrees. "I think all students could benefit from this type of critical analysis, which is often overlooked in undergraduate education."

Travisano says that discussions between philosophers and biologists at BIG not only allow him to find out what philosophers think about his work, but also challenge him to consider questions and possible answers different from those he has considered in the past.

"Identifying interesting and novel questions is a critical part of research," he says. "I keep coming back to BIG because here are a bunch of people thinking about issues similar to mine, but thinking about them in ways that are greatly different from how a biologist might think. It's all about asking questions and finding the questions that will get us to the most important questions."

What they did

What Travisano and Ratcliff, and coauthors Borrello and evolutionary biologist Ford Denison wanted to do was find out how, hundreds of millions of years ago, single cells first evolved into multi-cellular organisms--the first step in the process that eventually produced plants and animals. They decided to do an experiment using ordinary yeast, which, as any bread-baker knows, reproduces very quickly and thus can offer a view of evolution over many generations.

They created a survival-of-the-fittest environment for the yeast cells to grow in, allowing only the strongest to reproduce. After about 50 generations the cells started to form clusters.

It was a start. But clusters are not organisms--they don't respond to the environment in order to protect themselves.

So the experiment continued, and after 350 more generations--Eureka!

The cells began to act like organisms, responding to the environment in purposeful, self-serving ways. Specifically, clusters were dividing into branches, which reproduced, not randomly, but only when they were sufficiently mature. Even more striking, the branches were being individuated as a result of weaker cells dying, cutting off the connection to the "mother" clusters. Not only was this a reproductive strategy, it also demonstrated an organized division of labor. Single cells could congregate and work together to create a multicellular, self-directing organism.

"A philosophy lecture, given by a theoretical evolutionary biologist, had helped the researchers recognize the incredible significance of a line of experimentation they had contemplated, but not yet pursued," says Waters. "Likewise, scientists often help us focus on important conceptual issues that arise out of the science rather than spending time on questions that are not actually that significant."

For him, the unanswered questions surrounding evolution of multicellularity raised by Ratcliff and Travisano are BIG questions, both philosophically and biologically.

Sitting in his office, he points to the hallway. "That's exactly the kind of question that comes up in the room next door." He's talking about the small, unimposing conference room next to his office where philosophers and scientists meet weekly to discuss, agree, disagree, postulate, interpret, laugh, complain, fret, hypothesize, theorize, drink coffee, and stumble onto big ideas.

The BIG deal

For Waters, discussions at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science demonstrate how examining multifaceted issues from multiple perspectives can advance scientific investigations of nature on the one hand, and philosophical investigations of the nature and meaning of scientific knowledge on the other. For him, it's that successful wedding of the liberal arts and science that helps put the world of thought back together after centuries of science and humanities often following their own separate paths.

After all, examining the world solely through the lens of science doesn't make any more sense than examining it exclusively through a lens of philosophy, or poetry, or law, or any other single discipline. The world, he and many other center members believe, must be understood from multiple perspectives.

"The University of Minnesota is leading the way in bringing together philosophers and scientists," Waters maintains. "In times past, philosophy was interested in everything. The area of philosophical thought called 'natural philosophy' was spun off into sciences. Physics was first, then biology, more recently psychology. The sciences largely focused on issues that could be addressed by scientific methods and left closely related questions behind. Philosophers have continued to pursue many of these questions--but without the advantage of appreciating how they arise in ongoing scientific inquiry. What we're doing at the Minnesota Center is reconnecting the questions."

Alan Love, a philosopher of science and member of the center, agrees. "The experiment Mike and Will did after gaining a different perspective on their idea is an example of what happens when scientific and philosophical thinking meet," he says. "This was a case of productive collaboration accomplishing something none of us can on our own. It takes interdisciplinary thinking. Mike and Will had an idea, but for them the idea did not mature until philosophers picked it up and changed the frame."

Love is now writing a paper with Travisano on what kind of knowledge the experiment involves. The way the yeast model was used in the experiment illustrates the value of being able to physically manipulate a scientific model. Working in isolation from scientific practice, philosophers have tended to focus only on questions of how models represent--the way words represent ideas, or metaphors represent a dynamic. Physical manipulation can tease out more robust, and perhaps more reliable, information.

"The center reminds me that it's good to be engaged with biologists," says Love. "People trained in diverse areas need to cross-pollinate; this generates insights that would not otherwise be possible."

In other words, it's good for the scientist to visit the philosopher who "lives" in the room next door. And good for the philosopher to repay the visit.

- Randolph Fillmore, a member of the National Association of Science Writers, is a freelance writer specializing in university-based science communication.

If you like to read and explore what's new in books, you may already be on Goodreads.com, the social netwoking site about books. Reach is on Goodreads, and we'd love to have you join us. See our Reach Magazine group to check out the latest books by CLA authors.

Get 20% off "Bound to Please" books

You can get 20% off "Bound to Please" books at the University of Minnesota Bookstore in Coffman Union, and 10% off other books (except textbooks). You can also buy online. Click on "Books" and then on "Bound to Please."

Nonfiction

Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest

Alan Bjerga

BLOOMBERG PRESS, 2011 / First, the good news: the world need not go hungry. According to Alan Bjerga, former Minnesota farm-boy-turned-agricultural journalist for Bloomberg News, there is plenty of corn, rice, bananas, and tomatoes to feed us all at decent prices. Plus, increasingly better-educated farmers will grow bigger yields in the future.

The problem, Bjerga says, is that the system that provides us food—a basic human necessity—has been uprooted by an artificial whirlwind of crop markets dominated by speculators.

Based on extensive data-mining and interviews with players tiny and huge—from the United Nations to the coffee-farm cooperative Ethiopia, Bjerga unearths evidence that is as reassuring as it is provocative. With vivid images, he makes this massively researched account a page-turner.

His conclusion is both grounded and ambitious: fairer, global markets can be to everyone's advantage, he believes, if we start "connecting the farmers in places most harmed by hunger to the markets that can end it. Growing food more efficiently in more places creates more sources of food to replace lost production elsewhere. Growing it sustainably conserves scarce water and land. Growing it profitably ends poverty. Growing it for everyone ends unrest." The challenge to feed our endless appetites is, indeed, everyone's.

Bjerga was interviewed by Giovanna Dell'Orto, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Read the interview.

Bjerga, M.A. '98, mass communication, covers food and agriculture for Bloomberg News. An award-winning journalist, in 2010 Bjerga was president of the National Press Club and the North American Agricultural Journalists. Reviewer Giovanna Dell'Orto, Ph.D. '04, mass communication, a former reporter, is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

David Couper

CREATESPACE, 2012 / Retired Madison, Wisc., Police Chief David Couper guides us through his career as a progressive law enforcement leader during years of American social upheaval. This was also a time of breakthroughs, as social scientists brought academic rigor to the seminal studies of policing. Couper, always the innovator, tested those new paradigms in the crucible of the American street and campus. These were also years of advancement in technology and management theory, but Couper continually comes back to the most important asset of any police agency—its men and women. He reminds us that the effective executive will first be a "servant leader," concerned with the selection, empowerment, recognition, and continuous development of those people in direct service to the community.

Couper writes this self-reflective book from his current calling as an Episcopal priest, a calling that may share many of the same challenges and rewards as policing. Recommended for anyone interested in leadership or in urban social problems.

Couper, B.A. '68, Russian, and M.A '70, sociology, is an Episcopal priest and retired police chief. Reviewer Gregory S. Hestness, B.A. '85, sociology, is Assistant Vice President and Chief of Police at the University of Minnesota.

Memory of Trees: A Daughter's Story of a Family Farm

Gayla Marty

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 2010 / In the century between 1880 and 1980, American rural areas dramatically bled populations until those who lived on farms represented less than three percent. What has been lost in this transformation is keenly observed in Rush City native Gayla Marty's debut memoir, which details a childhood of hard work and sacrifice—but also of daily interaction with animals, weather, plants, and ancestral stories. In the '50s, two sisters married two farmer brothers, who lived in two farmhouses next to a barn. Marty's narrative of the growing families and farm carries almost King Lear weight—although here no child wants to or can afford to inherit. In the '80s farm crisis, her uncle's joy is sapped; what saves him, and Marty, is the word, divine and otherwise.

Marty, M.F.A. ' 97, works in communications at the University of Minnesota. Reviewer Terri Sutton is staff for the English department.

Michael Simon: Evolution

Susan Stokes Roberts, Editor

NORTHERN CLAY CENTER, 2011 / Michael Simon is one of the major ceramic artists who emerged from the U of M art department under the tutelage of Warren MacKenzie in the early 1970s. This thoughtfully edited retrospective provides a rich and intimate entry into his creative life. Opening with an essay by MacKenzie, it focuses on a beautifully photographed portfolio of Simon's work arranged by functional form, includes a chronology and personal essay as well as Simon's commentary about individual pieces, which provides insights into the evolution of the work.

Those familiar with our Mingei-sota (Japanese-influenced) artists may recognize familial relationships: a strong and sensitive commitment to clay itself, to the eloquence of shape and to essential connections between form and function. I was particularly interested in his distinctive approach to combining form and surface decoration. "The painting must carry the expression implied in the shape," he writes. For those pieces he thinks may grow stronger with surface embellishment, he chooses from his lexicon of animal and plants, seeming to stretch the images over the outer surface or inscribing them within an inner curve. What emerges is a remarkable marriage of two kinds of form, each made more emphatic by the other. It is wonderful to be allowed entrance so deep into the creative process, as we are with this book.

Fiction

In Caddis Wood

Mary François Rockcastle

GRAYWOLF PRESS, 2011 / Hallie is married to Carl; they have two talented adult daughters, a home in the culture-rich Twin Cities, and a beloved summer house in Wisconsin that tethers them all to nature—the Caddis Wood of the title. She has her poetry—and a past love. He has a celebrated career as an architect—and a degenerative disease. In this novel, which shuttles between perspectives and between past and present, Rockcastle traces the long arc of a marriage: refulgent birth and devotion, hurt, confusion and jealousy, the plodding times, submission and acceptance, and finally the radical embrace that defines profound married love.

Poetry

Whorled

Ed Bok Lee

COFFEE HOUSE PRESS, 2011 / It's the voice of a wanderer, hyper-aware of his own complicated embodiment, that inhabits Ed Bok Lee's second book of poetry. "Maybe everyone's veins are embued," he writes, "with a certain historical color of light." In this case, one wonders that the poet's veins have not been so permeated, so saturated, with pain that he has lost his capacity to speak. But no, where we think the voice must black out from trauma is where these poems gain their ethical drive. The pain—inherited from Lee's Korean War-immigrant parents and witnessed on the streets of South Minneapolis—is needed to reorganize the political body. The poems document and bear witness—not out of want, as Lee writes in "Poetry is a Sickness," but through "what flaws flower from rust."

Ed Bok Lee, B.A. '94, English, is a writer, teacher, and performer. Reviewer Christine Friedlander is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry and a graduate instructor of English.

Invisible Strings

Jim Moore

GRAYWOLF PRESS, 2011 / Jim Moore has keen eyes to draw the span of the world into himself and construct such dazzling moments as appear in this collection. These fragmented poems, with their precise images, continue the tradition of Sappho, Basho, William Carlos Williams, and H.D. Each a breath. A packet of Polaroids. A slip of humor. As in the opening poem, "Love in the Ruins," with its ephemeral glimpses—of a now-departed mother, an exchange of knowing silence, a warrior's gratitude, an observation on writing, spring. One can imagine the poet's twinkling smile punctuating the quintet, and this is how to read this delicate and clever collection: with a wry grin and the sort of kindness that comes from old friends. The only disappointment is that the reading is over too soon.

Students posed before the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. Their transportation costs were funded largely by donors.

When is music education more than music education?

When it deepens the worldview of young people with profound insights.

That's what happened when 29 School of Music students joined German colleagues to perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem here and in Germany. It was an experience music professor Phillip Zawisza called "a good strike for peace."

It was very moving to perform Britten's War Requiem with a generation who survived the war we fought against them. ... This collaboration meant so much to everyone who was involved and was evident by the tears in our eyes at the end of the performances. I feel lucky to have participated in this project and am thankful that it is now possible to have peace with this amazing culture.
-Brianna Farah, Master's student in vocal performance

Students faced standing ovations at sold-out performances on the Twin Cities campus; in Detmold, Germany; and in the Quad Cities.

37458|37457
Mon, 14 May 2012 10:22:25 -0600Employees: healthier out of the "cage"?http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=355782
355782

Animals in cages aren't happy; should people be any different?

Yet conventional employment practices, say sociologists Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly, can put people in "time cages," institutionalized rhythms that override individual and family needs, take a toll on employee health, and eventually affect the employer's bottom line.

To see if employees enjoy better health when they have more flexibility and control over their work schedules, Moen and her colleagues studied the experience of Best Buy Co., Inc, a Fortune 500 corporation headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, as it rolled out its Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) program.

Turning workplace tradition on its head, ROWE evaluates performance exclusively on measurable results. Employees have the freedom to routinely change when and where they do their work based on their own needs and job responsibilities -- without having to seek permission from their managers.

Over the six months of the study, researchers found that employees got almost an hour's more sleep a night, exercised more, had more energy, and less stress. When they were sick, they were more likely to go to the doctor and less likely to show up at work where they could infect others. More important, they had less work-related conflict with their families.

Healthier and happier employees benefit the company, as well. Turnover for all types of employees dropped 45 percent, and Best Buy is anticipating lower health care costs and greater productivity as the program continues.

Other members of the research team were Quinlei Huang, at the time a sociology undergraduate, and Eric Tranby, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Delaware. The study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, received funds from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute on Aging, the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

U professors Carl Flink and David Odde have discovered that skilled dancers can test a scientist's model of a cell's inner life more quickly than a computer can.

In minutes, biomedical engineering professor Odde can sketch a model's rules and dance professor Flink's dancers can play those rules out. To test the same model by programming a computer would take hours or even weeks.

For example, a big question in drug research concerns the difference between what happens in a test tube and what happens in a living cell. There's more "stuff" in a living cell than in a test tube. Does that extra stuff reduce the space and somehow speed up the processes in the cell? Or does it slow things down because it prevents molecules from moving in straight lines? Dancers can play out models for both hypotheses.

There are limits. Dancers can't simulate every conceivable 3D movement. But there are plusses too. Dancers can talk about their experience "inside" the cell.

"A great advantage of using dancers is that we engage each other, whereas the computer remains silent after the simulation," Odde says. "The ensuing discussions help us 'deconstruct' models."

"The researcher can actually discuss what the movers inside the experiment experienced and observed," says Flink. "They can also offer observations on their own that the researcher may have never thought of. This has happened a number of times."

37458|37457
Mon, 14 May 2012 10:14:38 -0600Voters who come in from the webhttp://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=355779
355779

Did you realize that younger adults are only half as likely to vote as people over 30? It's true: Election Day turnout averages about 69 percent for older adults, and 39 percent for younger Americans. In fact, youth is a better predictor of non-voting than any other factor, including gender, geography, race, and socio-economic status.

The 2008 presidential election mobilized unprecedented numbers of young people. But even then, 51 percent of the 30-and-younger crowd voted, compared to 67 percent of older citizens, according to The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Is it that young people resist voting for some reason? Seth Lewis, professor of new media journalism, says no; it's more a case of how hard it is to reach young people with political messages. Political messages and youth lifestyles don't seem to intersect much.

Until now, that is. Lewis and his former colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have produced a study suggesting that because young people "live" online, where there are plenty of opportunities to encounter political information, they are more likely to see it.

And they are more likely to respond to the information because it comes to them via a medium they like to use. Online political messages offer the chance to engage immediately with the topic. They can comment online, engage in discussions, forward information to friends, or post it on Facebook or Twitter.

Lewis says these more subtle methods of engagement can eventually "translate to greater activity—in the voting booth, where it ultimately matters."

The reasons immigrants come to the United States today are as diverse as ever: to flee tyranny, to seek economic opportunity, for love—you name it. And so it was for the 75 new Americans who took their citizenship oaths in Willey Hall this past March.

The naturalization ceremony, sponsored by CLA's Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), welcomed people from Denmark and Croatia, Ethiopia and Somalia, Tibet, Colombia, and Canada—in all, people from 25 nations, each with a unique story about coming to the United States.

The IHRC is in the business of keeping those stories. For more than 90 years it has advocated for the importance of listening to what immigrants themselves say about their experiences. In fact, as one of the first institutions established to preserve the personal histories of immigrants, the IHRC is today North America's most prominent center for the study of migration.

AILA used the occasion to make its annual Immigrant of Distinction Awards. One went to Olga Zoltai, who, as a child, fled her native Hungary and the invading Nazis by donkey cart. She and her husband, the late U of M geology professor Tibor Zoltai, eventually settled in Minnesota, where she spent decades helping other refugees settle into life in the Twin Cities. The other award went to Victor Contreras, a native of Mexico who co-founded Centro Campesino, a nonprofit fighting for migrant workers' rights.

Every year, IHRC scholars record the oral histories of the AILA awardees—opening windows onto the journeys of many people and entire communities, inviting us to consider the dreams they bring to their new lives in our midst.

Thanks to five undergraduate students, humanitarian aid workers around the world will be able to communicate with disaster victims in their own languages.

In a class on strategic communications campaigns taught by instructor Bruce Moorhouse, the five decided to take on a group project for Ultralingua, a Dinkytown startup that makes language translation software for business, travel, and education. Sarah Theisen, '12; Jaclyn Lien, '12; Michelia Pham, '11; and Patrick Puckett, '12--a student from the College of Design, joined Christopher Lucia, '11, who was already on board as an intern.

They were responding to Ultralingua's desire to formalize a program that would make the translation software available to response and relief agencies. The challenge was to build the program from the ground up—from strategies and tactics to the webpage.

A year later, Apps for Aid has been used by the Red Cross and by International Medical Relief (IMR), an organization that sends short-term medical missions to help in disasters around the world—recently in China, Indonesia, Chile, and the Philippines.

Apps include general translation and medical dictionaries, verb conjugators, apps for grammar and numbers, and flashcards. Users don't need to connect to the Internet to use the services.

Meanwhile, Theisen has been hired as an intern to expand the program. She says: "When I walked into Bruce's class the first day, I had no idea that it would change my life. I am so glad I was a part of the Apps for Aid group because it led me to an internship at Ultralingua. What I have done at Ultralingua has led me to job interviews and job offers. This experience as a whole is where I see my education and career come together. CLA understands the importance of doing more than learning by sitting in a classroom. I did a real project and made a real difference."

Economics—it's more than elegant mathematical models, says Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico who now directs the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

The early economists, he said at a recent CLA event, understood that their discipline was "about understanding human problems and providing ideas to address those problems.... This is something that was lost along the way. Economics as a technical discipline sometimes forgets to introduce into their models the political dimension."

Zedillo was speaking at the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute's recent forum on globalization, exchanging ideas with Timothy Kehoe, CLA's own Distinguished McKnight University Professor of economics and adviser to The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Kei-Mu Yi, director of research at the Minneapolis Fed, moderated the event.

The program underscored Zedillo's point, touching on the role of economics in a wide variety of human contexts, from global politics to Mexican history, from the environment to organized crime. Kehoe focused on how nations have rebounded from recessions past and present, and Zedillo, in Yi's words, on "the broad sweep of all the important issues involving globalization in the past 300 years."

The discussion prompted one audience member to comment on the importance of the social sciences and the need "to teach young people how to manage the forces that we have unleashed... [and] that humanity has to be able to manage the globalization it has launched."

"Globalization: The Promise & The Challenge" attracted more than 400 people. It was the largest event yet for HHEI, now only a year old.

37458|37457
Mon, 14 May 2012 09:57:32 -060040 Years Old and Getting Betterhttp://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=355774
355774

Emerging 40 years ago during the Civil Rights Movement, the Department of Chicano Studies was a manifestation of the nation's 20th-century struggle to end racism, sexism, homophobia, and other inequalities. Today it continues to ground its work in social justice, and incorporates community outreach and service-learning as key distinctions.

In celebrating its anniversary, the department is looking forward more than backward. A name change, to "Department of Chicano-Latino Studies," will signal its intent to address the changing face of the Minnesota's and the United States' fastest-growing ethnic group. And it will add to an already interdisciplinary curriculum with courses on education policy and practices, community filmmaking, health, business, and media.

Department chair Louis Mendoza says the department's future will be shaped by two goals. "First, we'll continue to play a critical role in educating everyone on the important contributions Latinos and Latinas make to the social, cultural, intellectual, political, and economic well-being of this country," he says. "Second, we'll continue to partner with the local Latino community to increase educational access, and through our service-learning opportunities work to improve their overall quality of life."

How do you animate the liberal arts?

"We need to initiate a Campaign for the Liberal Arts – a campaign that makes plain their essential place in the contemporary world.

"It never ceases to astonish me how easily the liberal arts are taken for granted in our society. Yet when a major crisis impacts our daily lives, the persons most needed and most wanted in the room are those trained in language, religion, history, politics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and media. We must animate the liberal arts daily."

Dean Jim Parente
2011 State of the College Address

Share your experience

How are the liberal arts essential in your life?

How do you demonstrate their vitality in the world?

Join the conversation. We'll share your ideas and experiences. Send us a note at claReach@umn.edu.

Like many of you who have supported the University over the years, I recently received a thank-you letter from our new president. Frankly, I was touched. And I was especially touched to see his signature -- Eric W. Kaler, Ph.D. ’82.

OK, I know it’s just a signature. But I’m a sentimentalist. I’m thrilled that President Kaler is so proud to declare his University of Minnesota provenance as an educator, researcher, and leader. Just listen to him talk, and you’ll know his pride is deep and heartfelt.

As a president who earned his stripes on this campus, he knows that a great University of Minnesota opens the doors to greatness for Minnesotans. And he knows from his own experience the importance of financial support to help students across the threshold. As he said in his inaugural address, the fellowship awarded to him “was the only way this son of a working-class family could go to graduate school.”

As a leading land grant institution, we have a responsibility to develop talent for a 21st-century economy. And as a top-tier research university, we have a special responsibility to educate graduate students. Graduate and professional degrees are increasingly essential for hiring and advancement in all of the industries that drive discovery, innovation, and the economy. Our graduate students are tomorrow’s leaders not only in higher education but also in just about every other arena imaginable.

It all begins here -- as a dream, a partnership, and a legacy. Every great professor was once a graduate student aspiring to create something new. And behind every great professor, behind every great scholarly or creative work or research project or breakthrough discovery, there’s a new generation of graduate students not only learning “from the master” but also providing inspiration and insight, investigating, collecting and synthesizing data, working shoulder-to-shoulder with their faculty colleagues and mentors to create knowledge, advance human understanding and create a better world. They are also teaching the next generation of students and keeping the legacy going.

As music professor Mark Russell Smith says so eloquently,

Music is an art of legacy -- I was taught by [a] ... master conductor when I was a graduate student, and now I have the same opportunity to share my experience with these fan-tastic students. I am a better conductor and musician because of my interaction with these students, and I have the privilege of sharing and exploring some of the greatest masterworks of art ever created with them.”

And you can see the results on the faces -- and in the words -- of graduate students like Ethan Rowan Pope:

The Voice to Vision anti-genocide project ... [with David Feinberg] helped me look outside and beyond myself for inspiration and knowledge; to learn from people who have survived unimaginable horror and trauma; to keep my artistic eye on the things that most matter; and to be grateful for my good health and my good life. David helped me stay confident with my own distinct voice even while his own, more experienced, voice gave me encouragement and guidance.

Without graduate fellowship support, especially in these hard times, such rich teaching and learning partnerships might never happen. We can only imagine the wasted potential and lost opportunities. With fellowships ranging in cost from $20,000 to $40,000 (depending upon the field), the need is monumental.

But so is the payoff. As President Kaler said, “philanthropy [plays] an absolutely pivotal role in building on the foundation of public investment to catapult us to excellence.” It makes “the difference between good and great.”

I hope that you will do what you can to keep CLA great by supporting our graduate students.

>> Mary Hicks is the director of Development and Alumni Relations. You can reach her at 612-625-5031 or hicks002@umn.edu.

"Everyone should learn her name...We all live in a better city because of her." -- Gary Schiff, Minneapolis City CouncilPhoto by Diana Watters

Judith Martin, Ph.D. ’76 and M.A. ’71, American studies; M.A. ’73, history; CLA professor of geography, died October 3 of complications related to breast cancer treatment. She was 63.

A highly respected academic and popular professor, Martin had an enormous impact on the Twin Cities. She served for 15 years as a member of the Minneapolis Planning Commission, seven years as its president. She worked on zoning, transit, and airport issues, on a plan for downtown and a jobs-open space-transit project. She was an advocate for the greening and revitalization of the Mississippi riverfront.

Said “to be everywhere,” in Saint Paul she worked on economic development and on the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board; she was a board member of the Hennepin County Historical Society and advised the Minneapolis Historic Preservation Commission.

Minneapolis City Council member Gary Schiff told the Star Tribune that Martin “was a bridge from the ivory tower to City Hall and from theory to practice. Everyone should learn her name, because we all live in a better city because of her.”

Martin joined CLA as a research associate in 1985, and in 1989 was hired as a geography professor and director of the urban studies program, a position she held until her death. She taught a generation of students to factor into urban development an entire range of human and environmental considerations: the history of a community, its geography, anthropology, architecture, culture -- and real world experience with the give-and-take of civic life and public policy.

In a tribute to Martin, CLA Dean Jim Parente wrote that she was an exemplary University citizen who could be depended on for thoughtful leadership and counsel. She served on many University and college committees, often as chair or vice-chair. She was a member of the CLA 2015 planning committee, and of the search committee for a new U of M provost. She received virtually every teaching honor bestowed by the University, the CLA Alumna of Notable Achievement Award, and the President’s Award for Outstanding Service.

She had a high national profile as well; she was widely published, often consulted, a frequent speaker, and a sought-after interviewee.

Elmer B. Staats, M.A. ’37, public affairs, and Ph.D. ’39, political science, died July 23 in Washington, D.C. at 97.

As comptroller general of the United States, he headed what is now known as the General Accountability Office (GAO) from 1966 to 1981, through four presidential administrations, appointed first by President Lyndon Johnson, then serving the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.

Staats transformed the GAO from an agency that kept track of federal dollars to one that evaluates federal programs, which have included Social Security, the War on Poverty, and the cost and reliability of military weapons. According to the GAO, he saved the government $20 billion.

In the days after his death, the flags in front of the GAO were flown at half-staff.

Staats began his federal career at the Bureau of the Budget (now Office of Management and Budget), in 1939 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and continued to serve in high-level positions under presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson -- who named him head of the GAO. He believed his most notable achievement was the agency’s audit of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), showing that contributions to President Nixon’s campaign had been used to finance the Watergate break-in of the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

He was a founding member of the National Academy of Public Administration and worked to establish its public service award program. After he retired, Staats served as president of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation Board of Trustees, and in the 1990s became the first chairman of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board.

He never disclosed his party affiliation; on the sofa in his office he kept a pillow embroidered with an elephant on one side, a donkey on the other.

Richard “Pinky” McNamara, B.A. ’56, died on May 23, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 78.

An immensely successful entrepreneur who credited his liberal arts education with the skills he used in his career, McNamara went on to become a University of Minnesota Foundation trustee, a member of its Board of Regents, and one of the University’s -- and CLA’s -- biggest benefactors.

From humble beginnings (he got his nickname from the faded red corduroys he wore as a child), he made his way to the U with the help of an athletic scholarship, and became a Gopher football star. Post-graduation he turned to business and discovered a knack for turn-around leadership. He founded Activar, a holding company that specializes in resurrecting ailing companies and today has 17 thriving businesses under its umbrella plus facilities across the U.S.

In 1992 McNamara launched his philanthropic support of CLA with a gift of computers to enhance the technology involved in student advising. Later, he earmarked $3 million of a $10 million gift to the University for the creation of the McNamara Employer Network, an endowment for expanded career planning for CLA students.

He received the University’s prestigious Outstanding Achievement Award in 1997. He served as a trustee of the University of Minnesota Foundation and was appointed to the Board of Regents in 2001, serving until 2005, when he resigned because of health reasons.

“There’s something about the University,” he once said. “You read about it, you listen to Gopher games on the radio, and you fantasize that you might be here. And one of the risks of dreaming is, it’s liable to happen. It did, for both of us.... Everything I think of, what I’m doing, it just goes back to the University. It’s a great institution.”

Sadie Kreilkamp, B.A. ’35, M.A. ’42, English, died December 21, 2010, in Cambridge, Mass., at the age of 97. She was a co-translator from the French of Paradoxes of Faith by Cardinal Henri-Marie de Lubac, S.J., an influential 20th-century theologian who played a key role in shaping the Second Vatican Council. Her grandson Ivan, an English professor at Indiana University, wrote that Sadie “at age 90 showed up uninvited at a presentation I gave at the Harvard Humanities Center and asked me a tough question about my definition of dramatic monologue.”

Charles Leonard Lewis, M.A. ’52 and Ph.D. ’55, psychology, died February 6, 2010, in Lancaster, Penn. He was 84 years old.

He had served in teaching and academic roles at Ohio University, University of North Dakota, University of Tennessee, and at the University of Minnesota, where he was associate director of activities from 1950 to 1955. Between 1972 and 1982 he was vice president for student affairs at Pennsylvania State University.

Lewis was the first editor of the American College Personnel Association Journal, and a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Nicholas P. Barker, Ph.D. ’66, English, died of liposarcoma in Lookout Mountain, Ga., on December 24, 2009 (his death only recently noted in the press), at age 72. Barker joined the Covenant College faculty as an English professor in 1966 and went on to become dean of faculty, then vice president for academic and student affairs, a position he held for 25 years.

36111|36285
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:06:13 -0600News from alumni

The interesting lives of our alumni

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=328343
328343

What can you do with a liberal arts degree?

Good question.

And good answers!

Alums continually tell us how they are “animating” the liberal arts in the world. In this issue you’ll read about judges and museum directors, poets and novelists, VPs of corporations and universities. CLA alumni work in the White House, in news rooms and in classrooms, they are lawyers, musicians and film makers. The MacArthur Foundation recently dubbed one a “genius.” Oh, and did we mention that Minnesota Viking?

1930s

Ann Schultz, B.A. ’39, English, published Message in a Bottle, a collection of poems that was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. Now 93 years old, Schultz found her voice in poetry in her 40s, having lost much of her ability to speak from repeated bouts of pneumonia. Her work has been published in The Saturday Evening Post, Chatelaine, Selco Regional Anthology, and elsewhere.

1970s

Mark Bly

Mark Bly, B.A. ’73, English; M.A. Boston College, M.F.A. Yale University, is senior dramaturg and director of new play development at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Tex. He teaches playwriting and dramaturgy with Edward Albee at the School of Theatre and Dance, University of Houston, and is Distinguished Professor of Playwriting in the theater department at Hunter College, Manhattan. He has dramaturged more than 200 productions at major regional theaters and on Broadway.

Philip C. Carruthers

Philip C. Carruthers, B.A. ’75, political science, J.D. ’79, is the newly appointed District Court Judge in Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District, serving Hennepin County. He previously served in the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office as director of the civil division, and as the head of the prosecution division, where he started the Elder Abuse Unit and helped organize the Joint Domestic Abuse Prosecution Unit. He has been in private practice in Minneapolis for 21 years, and from 1997 to 1998 served as speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. The U of M Law School named its public interest law clinic after him.

Michael Sidney Fosberg, B.F.A. ’79, theater, author of a book and a one-man play, both titled Incognito, was interviewed about his work on National Public Radio by (CLA alumna) Michele Norris. His works are autobiographical, about growing up believing he was white, never having met his biological father, who was black. Listen to the interview.

Karen Hanson

Karen Hanson, B.A. ’70, Ph.D. ’80 (Harvard), philosophy and mathematics, has been named U of M senior vice president for academic affairs. She previously served at Indiana University as executive vice president, and provost of the Bloomington campus.

As provost, Hanson will oversee budgeting, all matters related to academic programs, faculty promotion and tenure, research, outreach, and student recruitment and retention. She starts her new duties in February.

She is acutely aware of the scope of the challenge she faces: times are hard, the public is focused on the economy and jobs, and there is a new public skepticism about higher education.

“College is a time to prepare for a job,” she says, while maintaining that “public research universities also play the central role in creating society’s new knowledge. Through their liberal arts mission they help sustain and advance culture. They help people have productive and meaningful lives. They help citizens learn to live with one another, express themselves civilly, and be analytic about directions of the nation.”

She says, “Universities themselves must make the case that public higher education is a fundamental building block that the nation can’t do without.”

1980s

Terry Sater

Terry Sater, B.A. ’83, speech communication, was part of a news team which was recently honored with an Edward R. Murrow Award. Sater is a reporter and news anchor at WISN-TV in Milwaukee, Wisc.

1990s

Christian Overland, B.A. ’94, American studies, has been named executive vice president of The Henry Ford. He oversees all historical research, education programs, and experience design, and is responsible for the maintenance and growth of the institution’s collections. The Henry Ford is a history destination that includes a museum, village, IMAX theater and research center.

David Gerbitz, B.A. ’96, speech communication, is joining Yahoo! as vice president for account management. He was most recently the general manager for U.S. ad sales, strategy, and operations at Microsoft.

Joyce Sutphen

Joyce Sutphen, B.A. ’82, M.A. ’93, Ph.D. ’96, English, is the new poet laureate for the State of Minnesota, following inaugural state poet laureate Robert Bly. Charged with promoting and supporting poetry in Minnesota, Sutphen says she aims to bring together poets from around the state. A teacher of literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., she subscribes to Robert Frost’s description of poetry as “a momentary stay against confusion.”

Jennifer Holmes, Ph.D. ’98, associate professor, University of Texas at Dallas, and Amy E. Jasperson, Ph.D. ’99, associate professor, University of Texas at San Antonio, both political science, won the University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, the regents’ highest honor.

Andrea Mokros, B.A. ’99, political science, is the new White House director of scheduling and advance for First Lady Michelle Obama. She previously served in Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s administration.

2000s

Tiya MilesCourtesy the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Tiya Miles, Ph.D. ’00, American studies, is a 2011 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. An associate professor at the University of Michigan, Miles is a public historian -- like the historians who work in museums, historical societies, and on TV documentaries, whose primary audience is not other academics, but the public.

She writes about the complex relationships between the African and Cherokee peoples of colonial America. Her book, Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (2005), which won two awards, was based on her dissertation. Her newest work is The House on Diamond Hill: A CherokeePlantation Story, which in 2006 was awarded the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Lora Romero Distinguished First Book Award from the American Studies Association. See the video.

Katherine E. Merkel, B.A. ’02, political science, has joined the law firm of Henschel Moberg, P.A. as an associate attorney. Merkel previously clerked for the Honorable Laurie J. Miller and will practice exclusively family law. Merkel is treasurer of CLA’s Alumni Society Board.

Paul Amla

Paul Amla, B.A. ’03, global studies, M.Ed., 07, is president and founder of Amla International Translations, a Minneapolis interpreting service developed from his own experience as a West African refugee confronting the language barrier. Services offered include document translations, telephone and on-site interpretation in more than 150 languages. He is the recipient of the Business of the Year Award from Mshale, a newspaper for African immigrants in the Americas.

Asim Dorovic, B.A. ’05, political science, German, and global studies, is the chief of cabinet to the minister of foreign affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Conor O’Brien, M.M. ’06, music performance, will join the faculty of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, in February 2012 as a visiting assistant professor of music. A native of Dublin, Ireland, he runs a private teaching studio in Minneapolis and recently established a chamber music program that caters to youth and adult musicians in the Twin Cities. O’Brien has played with the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and is a member of the Minnesota Opera, Minneapolis Pops, and Lyra Baroque orchestras.

Amy Propen, Ph.D. ’07, rhetoric, was awarded the 2010 John R. Hayes Award for Excellence from the Journal of Writing Research. Propen is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition at York College of Pennsylvania.

Sao Seugene Her, B.A. ’08, Asian languages and literatures, recently won Best of the Fest award for her short film, Distance, at the Hmong Qhia Dab Neeg (Story Telling) Film Festival, Saint Paul, Minn. “The most important thing in my artwork,” she says, “is to express: don’t forget who you are and your roots, no matter where you may end up and adapt to a different society and culture.”

Marcus Sherels

Marcus Sherels, B.A. ’10, political science, signed with the Minnesota Viking as an undrafted free agent. After spending most of the 2010 season on the practice squad, he made the active roster in 2011 and is the team’s starting punt returner.

Writing Awards

Wendy Webb, B.A. ’84, political science, won the 2011 Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction for her first novel, The Tale of Halcyon Crane.

Peter Geye, B.A.’00, English, won the inaugural Independent Literary Award for fiction, a prize given by literary bloggers, for his novel, Safe From the Sea.

Lightsey Darst, M.F.A. ’03, creative writing, received the Minnesota Book Award for poetry for her debut collection Find the Girl.

Swati Avasthi, M.F.A. ’10, creative writing, won a CYBILS Award for Young Adult Fiction for her debut novel Split. The awards are given by literary bloggers for the year’s best children’s and young adult titles.

Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=322707
322707

How do we find peace after ruptures that are every bit as terrible as the world's worst natural disasters, but perpetrated by our own kind?

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tunes without the words
And never stops at all

Emily Dickinson

The question is ancient and persistent. We struggle with unreason and despair as loved ones return from Afghanistan and Iraq -- or not -- and the daily news, steady as a metronome, beats out stories of tragedy and injustice around the world.

These are hard things to think about.

But human beings have hope. We believe in the powers of human intelligence and empathy, and in the miracle of the creative spark -- powers we have invoked throughout history to invent incredibly complex structures like language, music, art, and poetry, democracy, social institutions, as well as technological solutions for problems of health, hunger, and commerce.

In this feature you will read about four College of Liberal Arts faculty members and a graduate student who are working to create ways to make humanity whole after self-inflicted trauma.

They are investigating how we can retain painful memories as cautionary and not destructive, how to heal broken hearts and reconcile old enemies, and how to elevate the cause of justice to the highest levels of human attention.

The wrongs they address may be painful, but their proposals ring true and their hopes are transcendent. Read, and imagine: we can conduct peace.

Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

36281|36111
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:20:00 -0600The power of the human story

Scribes for Human Rights: telling stories that statistics cannot.

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=322713
322713

Patricia Hampl, Claire Stanford and Barbara Frey: telling stories of human rights in a personal voicePhoto by Darin Back

By Greg Breining

One person’s voice, one person’s story, can rise above the cacophony of world events. Consider Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, an extraordinary account of the Holocaust. » “When you think about it, you realize there is not a concentration camp in that book, there are no figures, there are no numbers, there are no statistics, there is no documentation, except the documentation of a life, a precious life, snuffed out by hatred, racism, genocide,” observes Patricia Hampl, regents professor of English. “We supply that information, the horror, while she supplies what was lost. And so I keep going back to Anne Frank as the model for why it is we need the personal voice.”

Fostering the power of the personal voice -- in memoir, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction --to defend human rights is the purpose behind Scribes for Human Rights, a fellowship Hampl and Barbara Frey, director of CLA’s Human Rights Program, launched in 2006. The fellowship enables masters of fine arts students in creative writing to connect with academics and other professionals in the field of international human rights. The experience provides material for their writing, with the goal of conveying the experience of persecution and human rights struggles in personal terms, through stirring narratives.

“The personal voice is the centerpiece of what I feel creative writing has to bring to all this,” says Hampl. “It is not propagandistic; it is not polemical. It is, rather, expressionist and personally voiced documents. Sometimes of horror. Think Anne Frank. That’s who I think of.”

When Hampl met Frey

The story of Scribes began several years ago as Hampl wondered how to financially support students not only with teaching or research assistantships, but for their chosen craft. “We ought to have some things that are -- writing instead of teaching!” she exclaims. “Not everyone wants to or should be a teacher.” Then, at a dinner party, Hampl met Frey.

She was familiar with Frey’s work and the human drama at its foundation, and her ideas began to spill out: “... and you publish reports, but these reports are mostly based on trends, statistics. And we have all these people who can do narrative writing that brings the story into story form and highlights an individual....

“I hardly had to get the first sentence out of my mouth before she not only grasped it but augmented it,” recalls Hampl. “We have been a real team since then.”

Frey concurs. “In the field we produce a lot of dry legal reports and complaints on what are essentially gripping and wrenching human stories. I really believe there’s a need and I see an emergence of writers who are able to tell the whole story of what the victims or what communities go through when they are subject to human rights violations. It’s valuable to bring good writing skills to spread information and understanding about human rights violations, about their causes and consequences. We feel the scribes really benefit from learning about the practice of human rights on the ground.”

Scribes began as a full-year fellowship with a requirement to publish in the field. But the program changed with the realities of funding. Now it is a summer fellowship (with a stipend of about $4,000). Scribes have written about immigrant detention in Midwest jails, Minnesota’s movement to stop the genocide in Darfur, the Liberian truth and reconciliation commission and Thai desecration of Hmong burial sites.

One scribe spent time in Minnesota’s prisons and hosted workshops for human-rights workers on how to write compelling accounts of oppression. In some cases, students have proposed teaching writing workshops instead of writing themselves. To some extent, it’s up to the student to propose how writing will be combined with human rights.

Food Justice

The current scribe is Claire Stanford, a third-year MFA student. She writes primarily fiction, but has also written blogs and magazine articles on food. (She is getting a graduate minor in sustainable agricultural systems.) Her human rights focus is on “food justice,” ensuring that all people, especially the urban poor who might live in “food deserts,” have access to high-quality, fresh, nutritious food.

Stanford spent the summer working with at-risk students at Gordon Parks High School in Saint Paul, where many students have fallen behind in their studies, wrestled with drug addiction, or spent time in jail. Some are parents. Many have dealt with racial discrimination.

Says Stanford, “They are students who are experiencing a number of human rights issues, depending on how you define that.”

Stanford met with students three days a week, “helping the kids to work on their own writing, to work on their literacy and their basic writing skills, and also to work on some self-realization and self-empowerment.” Many days, Stanford met the students on the University’s St. Paul campus, where they visited Cornercopia, the student organic farm. Students were introduced to foods, such as kale, that may have been unfamiliar and learned lessons -- literal and metaphoric -- from the farm, often writing about the experience afterward.

Says Stanford, “There are a lot of intense moments coming out of these students’ lives. And they’re extremely willing to share them, which I thought was amazing.” Stanford will be writing lesson plans from the Gordon Parks experience. She also plans to blog about it and incorporate some of her experience and observations in a long essay or memoir.

Meanwhile, the fellowship provided her much needed financial support and provided the opportunity to represent the University’s Human Rights Program at the Edible Schoolyard Academy conference in Berkeley this coming June. “It’s easy during graduate school to get really cloistered in your own work,” says Stanford. “The fellowship really gave me the motivation and also the support to go out and do something. That’s been really invaluable in my understanding of this.”

And understanding is important, both for the writer and the public. Whether the rights in question are access to an adequate diet, freedom from racial discrimination, or salvation from political oppression or genocide, the human story is a persistent flame that casts a light of understanding.

Says Hampl, “We really trust first-person voice, just as we have all been moved by Anne Frank to understand that that voice and the ability to bring that voice to an audience and a readership is what can change hearts and minds.”

>> Greg Breining has written for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and is the author of several books.

“All a poet can do today is warn,” said Wilfred Owen, the premier English poet of the First World War. “My subject is War,” he wrote, “and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.” Indeed. Only 25 years old, Owen was killed in action in France -- just a week before the 1918 Armistice.

One of the greatest composers of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten, a fellow Englishman, melded Owen’s exquisite poetry with the ancient Latin Mass of the dead to create his masterful War Requiem. It premiered in 1962 at the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral, a 14th-century Gothic church destroyed by the Luftwaffe during World War II. Today a modern cathedral, rising like a phoenix and dedicated as a World Centre for Reconciliation, adjoins its skeletal ruins.

This spring CLA will mark the premiere’s 50th anniversary with an elaborate production conducted by Artistic Director of Orchestral Studies Mark Russell Smith and his German colleague Karl-Heinz Bloemeke. The Twin Cities performance will take place on March 1, 2012, in the Ted Mann Concert Hall as part of the 24th annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum, a major public event organized by Augsburg College and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. The War Requiem also will be performed in Detmold, Germany on February 18 and 19; and in the Quad Cities on March 3 and 4.

The Britten War Requiem will be performed on March 1 as part of the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, whose theme this year is "The Price of Peace."

The Nobel Peace Prize Forum is the only program affiliated with the Norwegian Nobel Institute outside Norway. For 23 years, this unique civic learning experience has brought Nobel Laureates, civic leaders, and scholars together with students and other citizens to inspire peacemaking by celebrating the work of those Laureates.

Learning to incline toward peace

The work is monumental -- from its powerful plea for peace, to its engulfing 80-minute performance time, to its orchestration and arrangement for multiple orchestras and choruses.

The educational goal of such an ambitious project is to combine the learning of the music, its poetry, and its cultural context to inspire an enlarged world understanding on the part of the students.

Art has that power, says David Myers, School of Music director. In contrast to technological solutions to our world problems, art offers empathy, sensitivity, nuance. “We want the performance to be at a high level,” he says, “but we want that high level to emerge out of understanding -- not just technical proficiency. The musical understanding then becomes a foundation for larger social-cultural understanding. In entering into an ambitious project like this we think about what our students will take with them as human beings and musicians. Will the experience make internationalization personal to them? Will the fact that these students come from two nations once at war humanize them? Attune them to the ravages of war and incline them toward more peaceful resolutions of conflict? We hope so.”

Mark Russell Smith

The War Requiem is ideal for these purposes. Smith says it “communicates to us of a more poignant and complicated world. [It is] is about the human condition, the human toll of war, the futility of war.”

That is why it will be studied by the performers and students from the School of Music, the departments of history and English, and the broader Nobel Peace Prize Forum audience, which will include a large and diverse group of undergraduate students, graduate students, professionals, and academics. Smith says, “I want to get as many people involved as we can. It’s a big thing, multifaceted, with so many layers to study.”

Replete with moments of great drama, the piece fairly cries for unity. In the final movement, for example, a soldier entering the afterlife meets another who blesses him -- it turns out to be the man he’d slain in war. In the Offertorium the baritone sings a poem that chillingly subverts the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac: while the poet says Abraham “slew his son /And half the seed of Europe, one by one,” a boys choir sings the Hostias (“Sacrifices and prayers of praise, Lord / we offer to You”) as if they were the ones being slain. In the Dies Irae, the soprano and chorus’s offering of consolation is juxtaposed with the cries of the tenor, singing of dead comrades -- the voice of a soldier who cannot be consoled.

Such musical moments touch the human soul in ways not available to political rhetoric.

International Collaboration

A unique set of circumstances makes this production a truly international affair. While traveling in Germany, Smith visited a colleague, soprano Caroline Thomas, who was teaching at the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold, one of Europe’s leading music conservatories. They brainstormed opportunities to collaborate and Smith mentioned his idea of the War Requiem.

Serendipitously, the German faculty had experience with the piece and were thrilled at the opportunity. “The work is ripe for collaboration,” Smith says. “It requires two orchestras and two conductors. And the size of the forces required, and difficulty of the writing, make it too much for a single chorus. The big choral features need critical mass for effect.”

Critical mass it will have, with groups combining and recombining over the several performances. In Minneapolis the University will contribute its 100-piece orchestra and 60 of 150 voices. The Hochschule will fly in its chamber orchestra and a small group of German singers; other groups include Macalester College Choir, Minnesota Boychoir, Augustana Choir of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., Quad City Choral Arts, the a capella chamber choir Kantorei, and soloists. In all performances, soprano Thomas will be joined by School of Music professor tenor John De Haan and baritone Philip Zawisza.

The March 1 performance at Ted Mann will take place on the first day of the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, a day dedicated to two separate themes: the relationship between peace and art, and the relationship between peace and business.

The Ted Mann performance will have a strong theatrical element. The main orchestra and chorus, with the soprano, perform the Latin text from center stage. There will be a stage extension for the chamber orchestra and male soloists, who perform the Owen poetry: the more separation, the better. A boys choir, in the distance behind, performs as disembodied voices.

Smith hopes his audiences, on whichever side of the Atlantic, will come away from the performance recognizing what “man’s inhumanity to man can mean, and in the reflective moments, react to the toll. For the performers, it’s one of those pieces that will be with them forever. The audience leaves transformed. It is not hyperbole to say that.”

Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

36385|36111
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:18:00 -0600And then there was one

Making art that honors the survivors of genocide. By William Randall Beard

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=327495
327495

David Feinberg, associate professor of art, with Joe Grosnacht (seated), sole surviving brother from when playing trains was a gamePhoto by Darin Back

By William Randall Beard

Joe Grosnacht liked to play “trains” with his five little brothers, the dining room chairs standing in for railroad cars. He was the oldest -- which meant he was the one who got to sit in front and be the engineer. That was in Poland* before the war. By the time he was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, Joe, 23, was the only brother left, selected by the physician Joseph Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” for hard labor instead of the showers.

Decades later, Joe’s simple line-drawing of six chairs, five of them empty, became the starting point of “Six Playing Train and Then There Was One,” a collage he created with art professor David Feinberg that also includes photographs of trains full of soldiers and deportees.

“It was devastating” to listen to Grosnacht tell his story, says Feinberg. “The collage looks as grisly as I felt.”

“We don’t illustrate history”

Voice to Vision pairs survivors or their children with professional artists and Feinberg’s students, who collaborate on making works of art. “I sometimes have trouble getting my students to think as artists, but not the survivors,” Feinberg says.

He began the project in 2002, working with Holocaust survivors; today it embraces people from other cultures as well. He has worked with survivors of genocide in Cambodia and Laos, Rwanda and Sudan, Bosnia and even the greatgrandchildren of survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1914 to 1918. “The Holocaust doesn’t disappear,” he says. “The story continues.”

Courtesy of David Feinberg

Each piece of art begins with many hours of dialogue. Feinberg uses colors or words, or objects on a table, or even odors to elicit stories and restore memories. Then he goes deeper, searching for visual elements to include in the collage. For example, for “Six Playing Train and Then There Was One,” Grosnacht provided 20 drawings, three of which were used in the final work.

“We don’t illustrate history,” Feinberg says. “We try to find visual information -- symbols or metaphors -- to create feelings. You’d be surprised what goes together to create a new whole.” The collages are made up of diverse fragments in juxtaposition--drawings, paintings, shards of paper, architectural elements, in one case a paint-stained floor mat.

Perhaps surprisingly, the collages are nonrepresentational, and that’s the survivors’ doing, not Feinberg’s. As one participant put it: “We don’t want to look at photos. We lived the photos.”

In one piece, an image of an escalator is reversed to a negative -- abstracted to represent the moving of people; for the survivor it it stands for “the bodies I had to pile up.” In another, drips of paint representing the river they had to cross to get to the work camp moved one woman to say to her husband, “Max, I feel like I’m there again!”

For the majority of participants, the project broke their silence about the horrors they experienced. Two sisters from Rwanda had never before told their stories, even to each other. “Their tragedy was so great, they didn’t need to talk about it. They understood instinctively,” Feinberg says.

Disclosing deep, emotional truths

But while creating the art can be therapeutic, the goal is not. Feinberg insists that its purpose is to influence by creating “new visual images that communicate with people who have no personal connection to the Holocaust and other genocides. We use a lot of mirrors, allowing viewers to see themselves and become a part of the artwork.”

He likens the collages to messages in a bottle, written to disclose deep, emotional truths. “The communication is not from logic. Metaphor is more powerful than illustration. If you respond to it more viscerally, it stays in your unconscious. It gets permanently saved and comes back.”

He also compares them to the best poems: “not the ones you understand immediately, but the ones that make an impression on you and make you struggle with them. Instant communication, like a poster or an infomercial, has an immediacy that is completely separate from works of art. It’s the difference between art and decoration.”

Since beginning Voice to Vision, Feinberg has stopped showing in commercial galleries. He says, “Galleries, with their white walls, are antiseptic. I love showing in non-sterile spaces, where you can relate to art because it’s emotional.”

He says the images require viewers to “recall their own experience of injustice, no matter how large or small. When that happens, they become part of an extension of the original experience” -- this is the “responsibility of the audience” -- and the project “answers to our own problems in the future. It doesn’t tell us what to do, but sets us up to be as big as we can be.”

Ultimately, Feinberg says, the artworks honor their creators. “We don’t think of them as victims, but heroes.”

Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

36385
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:17:00 -0600The justice cascade

Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=327496
327496

Kathryn Sikkink, political science professor, documents how justice cascades when brutal dictators go to court.Photo by Darin Back

By Greg Breining

Kathryn Sikkink has had a ringside seat to a profound shift in attitudes toward justice.

As a University of Minnesota exchange student in 1976, she lived in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, during the depths of the civilian-military dictatorship.

A decade later she was living in Argentina, researching her dissertation on an unrelated topic, when the very first “trials of the juntas” brought former military dictators to justice. She realized there had been a sea change in the attitudes of the citizenry of Latin America -- something that academics were ignoring or discounting.

“My first objective was just to document something that people weren’t paying attention to,” says Sikkink, now a regents professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. The experience shaped her academic work and led her to write The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics, published this fall by W.W. Norton.

Despite misgivings by some academics, policy makers, and commentators that the threat of trials causes dictators to cling to power more ruthlessly, Sikkink believes the evidence shows something else -- that human rights trials have brought justice, greater respect for human rights, and more-benevolent governments.

“It’s not just wishful thinking on my part. It comes from careful empirical research,” says Sikkink. “I like to think of myself as a strong supporter whose support is based on strong empirical evidence.”

Needed: The perfect storm

The theme for Justice Cascade -- indeed, the concept behind the title -- came from Sikkink’s experience in Uruguay, a one-time democracy that had recently slid into authoritarianism and political violence. “People could barely imagine that their country would be returned to democracy.

But what they really didn’t imagine at all is that the people responsible for those murders could ever be held criminally accountable,” says Sikkink. “If people in Uruguay couldn’t even imagine that that would be possible, how did it happen?”

What happened is that people did begin to imagine the possibility and with that convergence of events justice became possible. “In order to have something new like this happen you have to have almost a perfect storm,” Sikkink says.

Modern human rights trials were presaged by the trials of former Nazi leaders in 1945-46. “It starts at Nuremberg because Nuremberg sets a lot of important principles. But Nuremburg is the exception that proves the rule,” says Sikkink. The Nazi trials occurred only because Germany was defeated.

More recent trials are different: “Now we’re having trials in countries in which there was no war, no foreign army.”

“The trend, I argue, actually began in Greece in 1975 with the fall of the colonels,” says Sikkink. “The Greeks become the first modern society that holds its own leaders criminally accountable for human rights violations.” The Greek colonels had blundered in Cyprus, triggering a Turkish invasion, and “were totally delegitimized.” With the state thus ruptured, a path was cleared for these unprecedented trials, she says. Portugal experienced its rupture with the Carnation Revolution of 1974.

The Argentine junta lost stature with its defeat in the Falkland Islands in 1982. In one country after another, as trials have followed regime change, the idea of holding former leaders accountable for human rights abuses is more easily imagined.

“That’s why it’s called the justice cascade,” says Sikkink. “There’s this notion of what we call a norms cascade.” Unimaginable norms become commonplace.

Testing the idea

But as the use of trials has exploded -- in the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Egypt, and elsewhere worldwide -- critics have contended the trials are dangerous and counterproductive. The most common critique is that the increasing threat that dictators will be brought to justice ups the ante and steels the leaders against compromise: military leaders will stage coups to forestall any possibility of trials.

“The dilemma is, dictators have hung on to power for a long time,” says Sikkink, “Stroessner of Paraguay for 40 years. So somehow the notion that dictators in the old days didn’t hang on to power and nowadays, because of this threat of prosecution, they are all of a sudden going to hang on to power longer is a little questionable. How are we going to test that idea?”

Sikkink and her colleagues created a database of all “transitional prosecutions” from 1979 to the present. It turned out to be an affirmation of evidence-based research in the social sciences, revealing, she says, that “The use of human rights prosecutions is associated with improvements in human rights....In Latin America, which has had more trials than any other region of the world, the dictatorships have not lasted longer. We have virtually no dictatorships anymore in the region. We’ve had a huge upsurge in trials, and we’ve had the most complete transition to democracy of any of the less-developed regions of the world.”

While so-called realists may oppose human rights trials because they aren’t keen on the principle of international law, passionate advocates of international law may oppose human rights trials because they fall so far short of their ideals, says Sikkink. At a recent conference she met an academic who condemned the Cambodian trials of former Khmer Rouge dictators because they provided cover for the present regime.

“I can’t believe that no justice would be better than imperfect justice,” Sikkink told her. “Even if we only get five convictions, that’s better than zero convictions.”

The role of the United States has ranged from inspiring to obstructionist. America played a large role in the Hague trials for crimes committed during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, including political leaders Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić. On the other hand, the United States opposed the creation of an International Criminal Court except under the control of the United Nations Security Council, where the United States wielded a veto. “We failed,” says Sikkink. “Sometimes we are defeated by a coalition of smaller like-minded states and non-governmental organizations.”

It is said that justice delayed is justice denied, but “one of the lessons of the book is that there is no swift justice,” says Sikkink. “Justice very often comes slowly.”

And when it does, the world is often spectator to a defendant, a former strongman, frail and nearing death. Says Sikkink, “People say, ‘Let’s just let them go. What can be gained from prosecuting these individuals?’

“The problem is if you don’t have trials, sometimes people rewrite history and say, ‘That never happened!’ In Argentina, where the trials left this incredible record, no one can deny anymore that 10,000 or 15,000 people were ‘disappeared’ by the military regime. You can’t deny it. And I think as a result, there will never again be an authoritarian regime in Argentina.”

Greg Breining has written for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and is the author of several books.

Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

36385
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:16:00 -0600Books by CLA faculty and alumni

Reviews of books by CLA faculty, staff and alumni
Discounts
New: An online book club

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=322717
322717

Get 20% off all "Bound to Please" books at Coffman Bookstore, and 10% off other books (except textbooks). Buy in person, or online.

If you like to read and explore what's new in books, you may already be on Goodreads.com, the social netowking site bout books. Reach is on Goodreads, and we'd love to have you join us. See our Reach Magazine group to check out the latest books by CLA authors.

Nonfiction

Crossing Barriers:
The Autobiography of Allan H. Spear

Allan Spear

University of Minnesota Press , 2010 / Although I never had the opportunity to meet Allan Spear, when I finished his autobiography I felt I knew him well. With compelling candor and sharp insight, Spear explicates much of his life's journey — his awkward childhood years, his pursuit of a Ph.D. in African-American history, his move to Minneapolis for an academic career at the University of Minnesota, his frustrating and gratifying experiences with local politics and the DFL Party, his competitive bids for elected office, his intensely personal process of openly identifying as gay, and some of his experiences in the Minnesota Senate.

Spear is at his best when he takes readers with him through his life's critical junctures, including his decisions to stay in Minnesota, leave academia for a career in politics, and reveal that he is gay, as well as his responses to political changes. His at-times jagged path highlights the personal and political tradeoffs associated with pursuing a life in politics, and ultimately, the rewards that come with personal and political courage.

Spear championed a range of liberal policy issues inside and outside of the Senate, supporting his contention that, "When I insisted that I was a legislator who just happened to be gay rather than a gay legislator, this was not just political rhetoric." Even so, Spear perhaps underestimates his importance to the gay rights movement. My only dissatisfaction is that just as did Spear's life, the 410-page book ends too soon, leaving readers wanting Spear's own perspective on the last 25 years of his life.

Spear, associate professor emeritus, taught in the history department from 1964 to his retirement in 2000. Reviewer Kathryn Pearson is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness , Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements

Sam Kean

Back Bay Books, 2011 / As an undergraduate at the U, Sam Kean loved his professors' anecdotes concerning various chemical elements and the scientists who discovered them — indeed, as he admits straight off in this lively volume, he enjoyed hearing the stories more than practicing the science. His enthusiasm blows the fusty off this project: a survey of all 118 elements on the periodic table. With an eye for inventive metaphor (a mercury ball is a "silver lentil") and comic detail (in 1963 a San Diego scientist earned the headline "S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Prize"), Kean strings together his elemental tales into an immensely readable narrative reaching from Mendeleev's creation of the periodic table in 1869 to the new forms of matter being explored today. The story is shot through with references to mythology, politics, literature, philosophy, geology, history, and so on, as Kean shows how inextricably human life and thought are bound to chemistry. That lesson sounds like a chore, though, and this bright, ranging book is anything but.

Kean, summa cum laude B.A. '02, English and physics, writes for Science. Reviewer Terri Sutton is staff for the English department.

Courage to Stand: An American Story

Tim Pawlenty

Tyndale , 2011 / Written in the run-up to his bid for the presidency, the two-term Minnesota governor's autobiography is a personal manifesto for conservatism based on the belief that the U.S. has become addicted to government; the virtue cited in the title refers to "the power and the guts to say, 'No' " to "never-ending demands for more spending." The story follows the transformation of this son of a Catholic, liberal Saint Paul stockyard worker into an Evangelical Protestant conservative, through his legislative and gubernatorial service, and the account of presidential candidate John McCain's non-choice of him as running mate. Not least, the book is a testament to Pawlenty's religious beliefs and a paean to his wife, Mary.

Creative writing

Crossbones

Nuruddin Farah

Riverhead books, 2011 / Somali pirates and clan warlords. Young men from Minnesota recruited to blow themselves up in the country their parents fled. Nuruddin Farah's eleventh novel seems torn from headlines about his stricken homeland. In Crossbones, a U.S.-based foreign correspondent travels with his Somali-American father-in-law to Mogadiscio where he hopes to chronicle the strife; meanwhile, his brother flies into northeastern Somalia looking for his stepson, who has disappeared from Minneapolis. Farah completes his Past Imperfect trilogy, focused on diasporic Somalis returning to the country, with a taut narrative of well-meaning actors tightrope-walking through increasingly chaotic circumstances. Along the way, Farah fills in the gaps for Western readers, exposing the international game behind so-called "Somali" piracy and the toll taken on the ground by the decisions of distant trigger-pullers, whether they be "religionist" martyr-trainers or presidents.

Farah is CLA's 2010-12 Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts. Reviewer Terri Sutton is staff for the English department.

Safe from the Sea

Peter Geye

Unbridled Books, 2010 / This debut novel spirals out from the sinking of an ore ship in Lake Superior in the gales of November, a wreckage that continues to grind at one of the three survivors until it erodes his health, his marriage, and his relationship with his children. And yet, within the book's narrative all that action is long over; there is only the quiet story of the man, dying, and his bitter, bristly son, whom he's called to a remote cabin near the Superior shore. When author Peter Geye finally describes the ship going down, the visceral tale unspools as humble dialogue, the father carrying the son on his back out into the old storm to show how completely it destroyed -- and also how it shouldn't have: his survivor's pain didn't have to rot inside him. Within an attentive depiction of Northern Minnesota's stark beauty, autumn collapsing to winter, Geye illustrates the slow paring away of the duo's guilt and resentment until what's left is nothing but the heavy grace of snowfall.

Gryphon: New and Selected Stories

Charles Baxter

Pantheon Books, 2011 / Halfway through Gryphon, Charles Baxter's collection of 23 new and selected stories, one character turns to the other and informs him that the very sight of him causes her sadness -- "a complicated sadness," she explains. Though augmented with Baxter's gift for creating marvelously comic scenes, one could argue that complicated sadness is the condition that binds these beautiful and often surreal tales. From the elderly woman struggling with her own memory as her husband slips further into dementia in "Horace and Margaret's Fifty-Second" to the same couple marching toward divorce in "Poor Devils," life is not kind to the characters who populate Baxter's imagination. And yet, through defeats large and small, they survive and press on. Each story illuminates Baxter's mastery of short fiction, including the now-classic title story as well as the newly published work. This acclaimed author will read his work at the annual Benefit for Hunger, Nov. 15, Coffman Theatre.

Author Charles Baxter, a professor in the English Department, teaches creative writing. Reviewer Sally Franson is an English department graduate student and instructor.

Kara, Lost

Susan Niz

North Star Press , 2011 / It's one thing to feel completely isolated in the Twin Cities, another to struggle with homelessness, and yet another to be sixteen; Susan Niz's protagonist is all three. After fleeing the confinements of her suburban life, Kara escapes to Minneapolis where she faces much harsher realities than the ones she left behind. Susan Niz's debut novel deals with the frustrations of being a misunderstood teenager, ultimately revealing deeper questions of family and self. Susan Niz's protagonist feels so real; long after I'd set the book down, my mind kept wandering back to Kara, wondering if she made the right decisions, hoping she found the refuge she deserves.

The University of Minnesota's new president, Eric Kaler, maps out his vision. It's premised on the value the U brings to the State of Minnesota by generating new ideas and preparing future leaders. In an interview last summer, President Kaler said the U's future depens on how well we communicate that value to the people who support it with their tuition and their tax dollars.

Ever wonder what was happening in Minnesota in, oh, 410 CE, as Alaric and the Visigoths were busy sacking Rome and putting the fall of the Roman Empire on a fast track?

CLA anthropology students are finding out. Twelve undergraduates spent the summer on their knees--scrape-scrape-scraping in the dirt in 100-plus degree heat at an archeology field school in Hastings, about 45 minutes away from campus. The first school of its kind near the Twin Cities (another is near Wadena), it's organized by Department of Anthropology Assistant Professor Gilliane Monnier and Ed Fleming (Ph.D. '09), the curator of archeology at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

The students already knew that the area was inhabited from the Middle Woodland time (1-400 CE), into the Mississippian time (1200 CE until European contact), as established by Science Museum excavations in the 1950s.

Ancient blue Earth ceramic vessel of the kind found in southern MinnesotaPhoto by Department of Anthropology

The summer challenge was to learn more about how, in ancient times, the area worked as a village. The students uncovered pieces of pottery, flakes of chert, broken tools and arrows, and postholes that indicated dwellings.

"It's really weird to think these were once in the hands of people," said senior Heather Van Hove. "You're definitely connected to the area you're working in."

Anthropology major Gregory Reinert was over the moon when he discovered a nearly intact projectile point. "I had no idea it would get my adrenaline flowing so much; it was a very exciting time for myself and everyone else around here," he said.

Were these permanent settlements? (Doubtful, according to Fleming.) If not, what time of the year were people there? (The site may have been a winter camp.) Did the people have any kind of relationship with the robust trading community located at Red Wing? Many questions remain.

A $34.5 million renovation has set the stage for historic Folwell Hall to be the homebase for CLA's national hub for the study of humanities, culture and languages.

The marble walls still gleam, the woodwork still shines, and the massive iron balustrades still recall the baronial Jacobean architectural taste popular in the U.S. when Folwell Hall was built in 1906.

But when some 12,000 students entered Folwell Hall this autumn, they found comfortable new study spaces, and high-tech classroom equipped with sophisticated audio-visual, projection systems, and solar-sensitive window shades that interface with classroom lighting. They could access campus maps and room schedules by sliding their ID cards through electronic card-readers in the hallways.

New offices for professors and teaching assistants are wired for modern electronics, and have demountable walls that will make future reconfigurations less costly. There is sound masking, and an air-conditioning system that no longer drowns out the subtleties of the spoken tilde or accent grave.

Finally Folwell! A new and improved Folwell Hall reopened in September as the Midwest's epicenter of studies of languages, literatures, and cultures. The year-long update of the interior followed an exterior re-do in 2008. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.Photo by Everett Ayoubzadeh

A gala grand opening on September 9 drew a crowd, including Board of Regents Chair Linda Cohen, President Eric Kaler, and CLA Dean Jim Parente.

CLA has one of the most extensive language programs in the nation, offering 40 different languages, many of which support Minnesota trade interests, and are considered by the U.S. State Department "critical" for national trade and security purposes.

The internal re-do, like the 2007 external renovation which won a Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Award, was funded in part by $23 in State of Minnesota bond issues. The CLA Student Board played an important role in rallying legislative support for the project.

Folwell is on the National Historic Register as part of the University of Minnesota Old Campus Historic District.

Epicurus, the ancient Greek, had a theory: objects are comprised of tiny vibrating particles, they get lose and fly through the void of the air right into our eyes--and that is how we see things.

It was a controversial idea. Cicero thought it was wacky.

Although we know today that the process is much more complicated, there actually was something to that vibrating particles concept. Our eyes do collect light energy, which they convert into electric energy, formatting it into several types of patterns that are transmitted to the brain--where we make meaning of them and call the result "seeing."

Now CLA researchers, exploring that eye-to-brain transmission, have discovered we can train our brains to improve how they process those electrical signals.

Over a period of 30 days, post-doctoral student Min Bao, working with psychology professor Stephen Engel, trained 14 research subjects to perceive increasingly fainter images on a computer screen. They measured electrical responses in the brain's visual cortex with before-and-after electroencephalography (EEG) tests, and found that in all 14 cases the participants' brains were able to produce stronger electrical reactions to the series of images after the training.

This meant the participants could discern images that had been invisible to them before--images that were on average 30 percent less luminous.

Why is this important? It tells us that the primary visual cortex, one of the first areas to receive visual information and over which we have no direct conscious control, can be trained to improve performance.

This discovery could help people with amblyopia (lazy-eye disorder), in which visual stimulation is not well transmitted to the brain. It could also improve the training of professionals who must detect subtle patterns quickly--people like doctors who read x-rays or air traffic controllers who read radar screens.

The report of findings, "Perceptual Learning Increases the Strength of the Earliest Signals in Visual Cortex," was co-authored by Engel and Bao of CLA's psychology department, and Bin He, Lin Yang and Christina Rios of the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering. It appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience and was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

At the Raptor Center: what do you say to a snowy owl?Photo by Everett Ayoubzadeh

Children who stutter sometimes stop talking--they feel it's not worth the effort. But at the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences' day camp, young stutterers learn a different tune: "It's okay to say what you want to say, stutter or not. Don't clam up: you can be successful the way you are."

Proving the point are camp leaders, professionals from the community, and grad students, some of whom stutter. Children receive speech therapy, but the emphasis is on examining the effect their stuttering has on others and interacting with people they meet on field trips to fun places like the U of M Raptor Center (photo above).

The department has launched a similar program for teens. Scholarships are available, thanks to an anonymous donor.

What's the worst way to helping your partner with a thorny problem? Offer advice.

Image by Dan Woychick

In an experiment involving 85 romantic partners, CLA psychology professor Jeffrey Simpson and grad student fellow Maryhope Howland found that overt support, either practical or emotional, usually backfires. It often makes the recipient feel even more anxious or angry, indebted to the support-giver, and experience lowered self-esteem.

This was especially true among anxiety-afflicted males receiving emotional support from their sweeties.

Effective support, the researchers found, is invisible--given so skillfully that the recipient isn't aware of it. This was true of both practical and emotional support: the more "under the radar," the more effective. In order for this system to work, however, a recipient must trust the giver's good intentions.

How to give invisible support? The research warns against playing an overtly "supportive" role, and instead making the discussion equal and conversational. Invisible support de-emphasizes the roles of supporter and supported. One approach is to avoid calling attention to the partner's problem or limitations by using oneself or a third person as an example.

The research, published in Psychological Science, emphasized that, like most everything else in an intimate relationship, it takes two to tango when it comes to support. In delivering it the one partner has to be skillful; in receiving it, the other blissfully ignorant.

Far more common now than wars between nations, inter-ethnic conflict takes many forms -- from prejudice and discrimination to anti-government insurgencies and state-sponsored slaughter. Some of these struggles -- like the seemingly endless combat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- are responsible for millions of deaths.

"Stopping the madness" and improving intercultural relations have been the aims of Rosita Albert, an associate professor in CLA's Department of Communication Studies who leads the University's pioneering Intercultural Communication program.

Much of her early research examined ways to foster understanding between immigrants and "mainstream" Americans. In recent years, her work has gone global: troubled by massacres in places like Rwanda and Darfur, Albert joined with academic allies worldwide to look beyond interpersonal friction to the more volatile discord that often arises between ethnic groups.

With co-editor Dan Landis from the University of Hawaii, editor of International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Albert has gathered 20 of the world's top intercultural-relations experts to contribute to a first-of-its-kind Handbook on Ethnopolitical Conflict. Slated for publication in 2011, the book will provide guidance to scholars and policymakers eager to understand, calm, and avert inter-ethnic conflict.

"I see this book as a step towards genocide prevention," Albert says. "Some might say that's grandiose, and of course it's just a step."

Indeed, this child of a Holocaust survivor knows full well that inter-ethnic discord won't end any time soon. Easing it will require the sort of profound societal transformation that can prompt rival groups to stop shooting, start talking, and ultimately find their way to mutual understanding.

Are you extraverted? It's probably because your medial orbitofrontol cortex is large compared to the rest of your brain. Bet you didn't know that.

Brain regions light up on a scan, their color indicating activities relating to the Big Five personality traits.Photo courtesy of the Association of Psychological Science

CLA psychologists are learning more about how the physical characteristics of our brains--specifically, the relative sizes of the various regions of a given individual's brain--affect behavior.

In a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health, a team led by Professor Colin DeYoung studied brain scans of 116 health adults. They saw that four of the "Big Five" personality traits--extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness--related directly to the size of specific regions of the brain. (The fifth of the Big Five, openness, did not.) The assumption is that a bigger area of brain can accommodate more neurons, which can produce more activity.

Are we slaves, then, to the brains we were born with? No, says DeYoung. Just like biceps or glutes, the various regions of the brain grow larger the more they are used. So if you want to grow the empathic side of your personality, practice empathy. You will be beefing up your posterior cingulated cortex, making empathy biologically easier in the future.

The study, published in Psychological Science, is significant to the field of personality neuroscience because it supports the hypothesis that greater volume of brain tissue is associated with increased function. This, in turn, contributes to the creation of a broad theoretical framework for understanding the relationship of biology and personality.

Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, two former CLA faculty members, have won the 2011 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy."

Economists Christopher Sims (left) and Thomas Sargent conducted their Nobel Prize-winning research in CLA.Photo courtesy of the Nobel Foundation

Much of their prize-winning work was done in CLA's Department of Economics, which now claims seven of the University's 22 Nobelists, more than any other department. Their awards also elevated the U to second place among public research universities with Nobel ties, and to 12th place among all such institutions in the world.

In the early days of the partnership with CLA's Department of Economics and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, econometrician Sims and macroeconomist Sargent started building a better model to measure the impact of fiscal and monetary policy. Their work has helped explain why economies respond the way they do to intervention by central banks or other government authorities.

Three's a Crowd

... if they're Nobel Laureates from the same discipline. On November 16, headliner Peter Arthur Diamond, MIT professor, pioneer in the economics of social insurance and 2010 Nobel Laureate spoke at the inaugural Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute policy forum.

On the following night faculty and alums celebrated with Sims and Sargent in recognition of their 2011 Nobel award.

"Sargent has primarily helped us understand the effects of systematic policy shifts, while Sims has focused on how shocks spread throughout the economy," the Nobel Prize academy said. Sims, a professor at Princeton University, maintains close ties with CLA. Sargent is a professor at New York University, an advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and serves on the advisory board of CLA's Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute.

It came out of the blue: a notice of beneficiary. Two months later the estate attorney said the gift would be at least a million dollars. Then the checks began to arrive.

Charles and Myrtle Stroud: Their gift came out of the blue. It will change lives.Photo courtesy of the Stroud Estate

Myrtle Erickson Stroud, who died at 101, had left CLA $14 million for undergraduate scholarships.

It was not only the single largest scholarship gift in the history of CLA, but in the history of the university--and it was a complete surprise.

Stroud and her husband Charles lived modestly in Windom, Minn., for 68 years. Neither was a U of M alum, although Charles had attended classes here in the early 1920s, Myrtle in 1932. She'd previously graduated from Miss Wood's School in Minneapolis, one of the nation's first preparatory academies for kindergarten teachers, and went on to teach in Minnesota schools. Charles, a businessman and investor, died in 1973.

The Strouds had no children, and that they chose to make university students their heirs touched President Eric Kaler, who said of the gift: "It came from their heart, unprompted. We're incredibly grateful for that."

The Charles E. and Myrtle L. Stroud Scholarship will support new freshmen entering the College of Liberal Arts, and returning students and students transferring from other colleges. In its first year it will help 45 students, a number that will grow over the years as the endowment is fully established and invested.

"This generous gift can open the doors of the university to talented students who face financial barriers," said CLA Dean James Parente, "especially in view of the high rate of transfer students we have entering CLA and the growing need for all students for financial support. The return on Myrtle Stroud's investment in CLA students will be felt for generations to come."

36111|36279
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:00:00 -0600Animating the liberal arts: Bringing them to life in the real world

By James A. Parente, Jr, Dean

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=327396
327396

Jim ParentePhoto by Kelly MacWilliams

Every day and in all sectors of our college -- the arts, humanities, and social sciences -- we work on fundamental questions about the nature of the human experience, the kind of society in which we want to live, the boundaries between individual well-being and the collective good, and most importantly, how to prepare students to shape and lead our world.

This important work animates the liberal arts, bringing them to life in the real world and demonstrating their centrality and value.

In this issue of Reach, you will find stories about faculty and students confronting issues of human rights, justice, and accountability under the law; producing written and visual art that helps us understand the remembered horrors of genocide; performing music that heals and humanizes. We take great pride in the accomplishments of our faculty and students, but they do more than contribute to their disciplines. They also animate the liberal arts and illuminate their fundamental role in educating individuals and shaping public discourse.

Dr. Eric Kaler, our new President, embraces the centrality of the liberal arts. An alumnus of the U's distinguished Department of Chemical Engineering, he well understands that the continued distinction of our University depends on the academic strength and vibrancy of the College of Liberal Arts. He visited our college on several occasions this fall to reaffirm the foundational role liberal arts play in 21st-century research and education.

Many public universities have been disinvesting in the humanities, but this fall CLA affirmed its commitment by celebrating the renovation of Folwell Hall, the U's center for global languages, literatures, and cultures -- fields essential to the success of a global university. We are grateful for the extraordinary support we received for this project from the Board of Regents, former President Robert Bruininks, and the Minnesota legislature.

We were further buoyed by the stunning estate gift of Ms. Myrtle Stroud of Windom, Minn.: $14 million, the largest gift for undergraduate student support ever received by either the college or the University. This fall we welcomed the first cohort of students funded by this extraordinary gift.

In October, the bright light of the Nobel Prize in Economics shone on two former faculty, Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, for work completed largely during their joint tenure at our stellar Department of Economics. This month they joined us at the first public forum of our Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute, launched last February to bring the latest research to bear on issues like environmental protection, social insurance, and financial regulation.

I invite you to stay in touch. Visit the CLA2015 website to find my 2011 State of the College address and plans to advance the college this year. Contact me at cladean@umn.edu. And join us for a lecture, performance, or exhibition. I promise you will be amazed and delighted!

With best wishes for the holidays and the New Year,
James A. Parente, Jr.
Dean

"I've been incredibly fortunate so far as an entrepreneur and as a citizen of our state and now, it's my turn to 'pay it forward.'" Scott LitmanPhoto courtesy of Magnet 360, LLC

Scott Litman spends his days on the cutting edge of digital marketing and promotion, creating social media systems and web search optimization and other strategies that didn’t even exist a decade ago.

The 1990 University of Minnesota CLA graduate and his business partner, Dan Mallin, have hit the entrepreneurial jackpot three separate times, building successful digital marketing companies from scratch and then selling them at great profit to bigger businesses. Now they’re back with a fourth company, Magnet 360, which looks like another winner.

He’s rightly proud of his career success, but there’s an extra touch of satisfaction in his voice when Litman speaks about his volunteer efforts with a non-profit venture he helped launch and sustain: the Minnesota Military Appreciation Fund, which raises money for troops returning from overseas combat zones. He and Mallin, who has an M.B.A. from the University’s Carlson School of Management, have provided much time and expertise to the fund as it has mushroomed from its founding in 2005 to its current level, raising $12 million to provide grants to more than 12,000 returning troops and their families.

The grants range from $500 to each service member returning from combat, up to $10,000 to those who’ve been seriously injured during their tour of duty. Families of a Minnesota service member killed in action receive $5,000.

Entrepreneurial energy

Although Litman didn’t serve in the military, and no one in his family has been sent overseas on combat missions since 2001, he threw himself into the project with his typical entrepreneurial energy after being recruited by MMAF founders Gene Sit and Michael Gorman.

Gorman knew about Litman’s marketing abilities and public service commitment from their work together in the local entrepreneurial community.

“We knew from the beginning that we needed to project a consistent and highly professional face, to build a brand, as well as a technical platform to get the word out about our program and facilitate the grant process,” said Gorman, managing director of Split Rock Partners, a Twin Cities venture capital firm. “I knew Scott has a tremendous energy level and appetite for interesting challenges; he’s an optimistic person who wades right in and rolls up his sleeves to make something happen,” Gorman said.

Litman didn’t hesitate when approached.

So we just go on with our lives?

“We were having a nice lunch and Gene Sit reminded us that there were thousands of Minnesotans in the desert that very day with nothing to eat but MREs [Meals Ready to Eat]. And he said that only about .5 percent of Americans were being impacted by the war while the rest of us go on with our lives,” Litman recalled.

“I saw it as a way to make sure that everyone -- whether they were for the conflicts or against them, whether they want to support war or support the troops by bringing them home -- could say thank you and help take care of these people. It’s a thank-you, not just for the injured or those in need, but for everyone who served.”

So Litman and Mallin joined the fund’s steering committee in those beginning stages. They set up the website, conceived and executed the branding, and promoted the program, both to eligible veterans and to the public, for the fundraising efforts that provide the funding.

Their promotion efforts include the MMAF’s annual walk and recognition event for military members, and an annual fundraising dinner which has featured speakers like Sen. John McCain, journalists Tom Friedman and Tom Brokaw, and author Vince Flynn.

Gratitude

The response from veterans receiving the grants has been heartwarming and inspirational, Litman said. He cited thank-you notes from recipients:

“I just wanted to take a moment and let you know how much my family and I have appreciated the MMAF grant we received. The $500 was such an encouragement to us as we were facing reintegration time together. Your work is important! Please let everyone know that MMAF is making a positive difference in so many lives.” -- Staff sergeant, Geneva, Minn.

Thank you kindly for the $500 grant I received in the mail. The funds will be used wisely and couldn’t have come at a better time as I transition back into civilian life. Wishing you all the best and thank you for your generosity.” -- First lieutenant, Saint Paul, Minn .

John Kriesel, state representative from Cottage Grove, Minn. and a sergeant in the Minnesota National Guard who lost both legs in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, was another fund recipient. “The Minnesota Military Appreciation Fund is a tremendous asset to the state. It’s always an honor to work with them,” he said.

Litman and Mallin are also the founders of the Minnesota Cup, a statewide business plan competition for entrepreneurs. Since 2005, the competition has played an important role in the state’s efforts to seek out and reward new inventions and ways of doing business.

Litman was a history major at the University and says that was a great foundation for his business success. “The CLA and History Department don’t realize that they’re actually providing a good business background for students,” Litman said. “Many graduates are very successful entrepreneurs; we know about learning from the past and appreciate the guidepost lessons of others who’ve gone before.”

His achievements, and appreciation for the help he’s had along the way, led to the interest in community service, he said. “Everything I’ve received, especially from the U and from my family, has ultimately led me to realize there’s a time to give back,” he said. “I’ve been incredibly fortunate so far as an entrepreneur and as a citizen of our state and now, its my turn to ‘pay it forward’. Both the Minnesota Cup and MMAF are there to help people who are working hard and doing great things and give them a leg up when they need it.”

Joe Kimball, a former columnist and reporter for the Star Tribune, now writes for MinnPost. He is the author of the bestselling Secrets of the Congdon Mansion.

36111|36283
Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:59:52 -0600Bound to Please

Read reviews of books and other creations by CLA faculty, staff, and alumni

A Rare Perspective
At 94 she's fierce, honest, and a published poet. What happened when alumna Lucille Broderson returned to CLA...

Story and interview of Lucille Broderson by poet Michael Dennis Browne and Reach editor Mary Pattock

At 94 she's fierce, honest, and a published poet. What happened when alumna Lucille Broderson returned to CLA...

From an interview of Lucille Broderson by poet Michael Dennis Browne and Reach editor Mary Pattock

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=285415
285415

Photo by Kelly MacWilliams

You're Wearing a Blue Shirt the Color of the Sky: Selected Poems

Lucille Broderson

Nodin Press, 2010 / She is fierce, delicate, breathtakingly honest, and writes poetry from a rare perspective: she's 94 years old. Alumna Lucille Broderson has become something of a phenom since the publication of this, her second book. She draws crowds at her readings at The Loft and elsewhere. Her poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor.

Broderson graduated from CLA in English in 1937, proceeded to earn a degree in library science and work as a librarian, and served for some years at the U of M. Then, an empty nester in her 60s, she returned to her first love—writing. She signed up for a poetry class in CLA with English professor Michael Dennis Browne, now emeritus, who edited her current book. "It changed my life," she says. "I am a better person."

The scholarship that launched Broderson on her literary journey some 70 years ago, the Captain DeWitt Jennings Payne Memorial Scholarship, now provides $2,000 annually to students "who show special capacity for literary studies." It was established by the late Olivia Payne Stover in memory of her brother, Captain Payne, the first American aviator killed in World War I. -MP

MDB: Lucille, I've heard you read twice in the last month—never heard you give a full-length reading before—at the Loft and Coffman. I was just blown away by your reading style. Were you ever going to be an actress? Where do you get your voice and your strength as a reader?

LB: I think from reading my poetry and other students' poetry in your classes! Because I knew for some reason that I could read well. I mean, I thought I did. I don't know whether I knew, but I was sure. I want to read it right! The interesting thing is afterwards, one of my sons—I have four—this is Eric, who is now 60, and he said, "Mom, you could have been an actress!" So he was really impressed!

MDB: Any signs of that when you were younger, like at home? Did you get to recite things at home? Where did the voice come from—from inside, like the poems?

LB: Yea, it's just there. That's what I was thinking when I read this wonderful book [of my own poetry] that Michael is really responsible for. And I picked it up and I started at the back—don't ask me why but I did, and when I got through, I thought, "I am amazing!" I didn't say "I" though, to the book. I said, "Lucille, you are amazing. I think it is amazing that you can do this!"

MDB: Where'd it come from?

LB: It was nothing I did. I found many of my poems in my journal. The feeling was that it had been taken from me; I didn't do it. It was like I was up here, and then suddenly I reached down and brought up this, and I didn't know who did it. I don't write these poems. I have nothing to do with it. And then it's like: here, you can have it now—and they give it to me. I don't know whether I'm dreaming or what. But nevertheless I feel like I can't take any credit for anything.

MP: Lucille, I heard you say poetry changed your life.
LB: I think somehow it made me—I hate to use the term, but a nicer human being. I mean a more understanding human being of other people's problems and misery.

Two PoetsBroderson and Browne

LB: Absolutely. I say, Lucille, you can't forget that Captain Dewitt Jennings Payne [scholarship]. It was a $200 award. Now I don't know why I would get that. It was a lot of money. It must have been related to the writing. I was an English major. I wanted to be a writer.

MDB: Your poems are so rich in things that you see. You see something and the movie kind of begins. Robert Bly said once, "It's not a matter of making something up, but tuning in to something." You sit on a bench and maybe you see a starfish or a young couple and it's like a painter. It's enough subject matter to get you going, isn't it? Your poems are so painterly. The other day when you were reading at Coffman you had this line: "splits like fluff from a dandelion" and I thought of Theodore Roethke—and it's a great line: "like a wet log I stand within a flame." But you have a gift of imagery, too. Based on your observation of the real world. You use your eyes.

LB: Evidently you use your eyes, but you don't know you used them! But it's there inside of you!

MDB: And then it draws things out from the heart and memory and dreams.

MP: A lot of people, when they get older, close in on their life. You did the opposite, you learned something new, went back to school. Where did get that energy?

LB: That's never been a problem. I'm still here, still getting things that excite me inside. So I read. I take the Wall Street Journal. A friend of mine says, "Oh—they're nuts. I wouldn't pay any attention to what they tell you to do." That's not it! It's a way for me to know what's happening, for God's sake, not to get their advice!

As far as poetry, what it did for me, I can absolutely say this and feel comfortable saying it: I like myself. This is the person I would be but I would never know that when I was younger. I would have had no idea this is what I should be. I think it was the poetry. Something drove me to it.

MDB: There's a great Yiddish word, bashert: meant to be, destined to be. You were meant to do this.

LB: I think so. When I finally could do it, I seemed to become what I could be, whatever that is. For one thing, I think there's a lot more empathy than there ever was. And of course, (gesturing to Michael) it's brought me such a wonderful friend.

Our long, snowy winter has finally drawn to a close, and the burgeoning colors of spring signal a long-awaited renewal. Spring in the Midwest also brings the threat of violent storms, but some of the greatest storms around the country center on the funding of education, especially public higher education, and strategies state governments are pursuing to balance their budgets. We read almost daily of looming deep reductions to higher education in several states and of proposals for dramatic increases in tuition. Public research universities are, of necessity, re-examining their priorities and devising new ways to fulfill their educational, research, and outreach missions with fewer resources from states whose citizens and economies they were founded to serve.

The changing landscape of American higher education—indeed, of higher education globally—affects all colleges and universities, both public and private, albeit in different ways. Of the many fields represented at a university, the liberal arts, especially the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences, are being subjected to intense scrutiny.

Some universities have reduced and even eliminated programs such as classics or philosophy that have for centuries been fundamental to a liberal education. Foreign language instruction is being sharply curtailed, even in commonly taught languages such as German and French, even as many institutions are expanding their internationalization efforts. The academic job market for Ph.D.s across the humanities continues to contract, despite strong student interest in these fields, and we are in danger of losing a generation of scholars and teachers whose research otherwise would have forged new paths in philosophy, history, literature and culture, and religion.

During the past year, the CLA 2015 Planning Committee—a group of faculty, staff, and students I charged in December 2009 to provide counsel about the long-term future of our college—has been meeting. Its report, issued late last fall, garnered much attention across the college and University for its eloquent exposition of the centrality of the liberal arts to every great university.

The report outlines steps we must take to ensure that the liberal arts at Minnesota will continue to thrive. It emphasizes the need for signature undergraduate, graduate and research programs, in which we will excel and by which we will distinguish ourselves among peer institutions. It calls for building greater connections with external communities and partners in accordance with our public mission. (You can read more about the report in this issue of Reach.)

The changes we are considering aim to ensure sustainable academic excellence at a time of reduced public resources. That challenge actually provides us an exciting opportunity to rethink priorities and devise new ways to improve research and education as we reaffirm our enduring belief in the fundamental value of the liberal arts.

The success of our University depends on maintaining a vibrant College of Liberal Arts as its strong foundation. Without the liberal arts, our deepest knowledge—of ourselves, our relationships to other cultures, the values by which we live, and the political, social, and religious institutions that shape our world—would be sorely wanting.

You, our alumni and supporters, are the best ambassadors for the core value of a liberal arts education. Please join with us in promoting the liberal arts in Minnesota and beyond. The future of our society and our world depend on whether we can make visible the myriad ways in which the liberal arts illuminate the most complex issues of our time and provide a sure path for resolving them.

The Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute is an exciting new global initiative in CLA. Two prominent economics alums, Richard Sandor and Robert Litterman, were the featured speakers at the Feb. 9 inaugural event, Addressing Climate Change: Economic Perspectives on Pricing Environmental Risk.

"Why now, why this institute?" asked economics alumnus and advisory board chair Kurt Winkelmann at the event. "The mission of the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute is consistent with a public university: educate, inform and, by doing so, help influence the direction of public policy. The institute will connect the economics profession to broader themes affecting society."

Visit hhei.umn.edu to watch video from the event and join the mailing list for the latest research and event information. "We are on the verge of important, innovative thinking in economics, and we hope to bring that to the public at large," said Professor V.V. Chari, HHEI's founding director.

Nicholas Clegg, a 1990 CLA graduate student, was named deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom last May. A Liberal Democrat, he is part of the coalition government headed by the Conservative Party's Prime Minister David Cameron—the result of a rare "hung parliament" in which no political party commanded a majority in the House of Commons.

At the U, Clegg studied politics and international relations, and pursued a special interest in human rights. His thesis title was "The Deep Green Movement and its Political Philosophy."

Clegg previously served as a Member of the European Parliament, co-founding a movement for reforms relating to its expenses, transparency, and accountability. Among his signature issues are civil liberties, opposition to identity cards and excessive counter-terrorism laws, and defense of Britain's Human Rights Act.

Gene Sperling

Gene Sperling, B.A. '82, political science, J.D. '85, Yale, is the new director of the White House National Economic Council, replacing Larry Summers. He will be involved in shaping virtually all of the administration's economic policies. In announcing Sperling's appointment, President Obama said, "He's a public servant who has devoted his life to making this economy work—and making it work specifically for middle-class families. Few people bring the level of intelligence and sheer work ethic that Gene brings to every assignment he's ever taken."

Sperling, who most recently served as counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, actually held this NCE directorship before, during President Clinton's last four years as president. He previously was a corporate philanthropy consultant for Goldman Sachs, an economic columnist and commentator for Bloomberg News, and a consultant and contributing writer to the NBC drama series The West Wing.

In 1980, while at the U of M, Sperling captained the tennis team as he maintained a 4.0 grade point average. At Yale, he was the editor of the Yale Law Journal.

See Associated Press story and video of appointment at z.umn.edu/2vs

Mitch Anderson, B.A. '08, journalism, has joined Tunheim Partners, a Twin Cities strategic communications company. He previously held newspaper and communications positions at the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Washington, D.C., bureau, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, and Edina Public Schools.

Sid Bacon, Ph.D. '85, experimental psychology, is the dean of natural sciences at Arizona State University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and directs ASU's Psychoacoustics Laboratory.

Emilie Buchwald

Emilie Buchwald, Ph.D. '71, English, received the 2010 A.P. Anderson Award from the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minn., in recognition of her contributions to the cultural and artistic life of Minnesota. Buchwald recently retired from Milkweed Editions, the Minnesota-based influential literary press she co-founded. She has written award-winning children's novels and edited or co-edited books that together have won more than 200 awards. She received the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, National Book Critics' Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Minnesota.

Ann Cathcart Chaplin, B.A. '95, sociology, J.D. '98, Harvard Law School, was named a "Minnesotan on the Move" by Finance & Commerce magazine. The award honors 40 Minnesota businesspeople "poised to make business history during the coming years." Cathcart Chaplin is the managing principal of the Twin Cities office of Fish & Richardson, the country's largest intellectual property law firm. At 36, she is the firm's first female managing principal and the youngest woman ever to head a major Twin Cities law firm.

Deborah Ann (Offt) Peterson, B.A. '74, German, has joined the Northwest Area Foundation in Saint Paul as manager of grants and contracts. She formerly worked at 3M, negotiating and overseeing vendor contracts. Peterson holds a master's degree in organizational leadership from St. Catherine University and a mini MBA in nonprofit organizations from the University of St. Thomas.

Peter Purin, M.A. '07, Ph.D. music theory, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan., has been named an assistant professor of music at Oklahoma Baptist University. He specializes in musical theater; his dissertation was titled "Musical Style in the Musical Theatre Works of Stephen Sondheim." Purin previously served as teaching assistant in CLA and at Kansas.

Kimberly Allen Snyder, B.A. '92, history, M.A. '97, has been elected to the board of directors of the Charities Review Council, Saint Paul. Snyder founded and is a partner of Excelsior Bay Group, LLC, a business that helps non-profit organizations build and assess their long-term fundraising capacity.

Jacqueline Stahlmann, B.A. '10, Spanish and global studies, worked at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., this fall as the Theater For Young Audiences intern. She researched, read, and reported on possible subjects for commissions, and contributed to conversations regarding future international children's theater festivals and tours.

Robert Tennessen

Robert Tennessen, B.A. '65, economics, J.D. '68, was elected president of The Advocacy Group, a network of independent public affairs and government relations companies based in Arlington, Va., that provides professional advocacy services worldwide, and over multiple jurisdictions. A former state senator, Tennessen practices law in Minneapolis, specializing in government relations and administrative law. He is a state appointee to the national Uniform Law Commission, and chairs its legislative committee. CLA previously honored him with an Alumni of Notable Achievement award.

Kasisomayajula Viswanath

Kasisomayajula (Vish) Viswanath, M.A. '86, Ph.D. '90, journalism and mass communication, was named Outstanding Health Communication Scholar for 2010 by the health communication divisions of the National Communications Association and the Internal Communication Association.

He is an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, and Director of the Health Communication Core of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

Melissa Weiner, Ph.D. '06, sociology, is an assistant professor of sociology at Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Conn. In her first book, Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City, she describes how students in both groups were denied high-quality education, but Jews eventually advanced academically because their "whiteness" gave them more opportunity to assimilate. In her own effort to boost literacy and promote social justice, Weiner has started Brighter World Books, a nonprofit organization that collects used books in the United States and ships them to school libraries in South Africa.

Brenda Cassellius

Brenda Cassellius, B.A. '89, psychology, Ed.D. '07, University of Memphis, was appointed Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education. Most recently superintendent of the East Metro Integration District in the Twin Cities, she previously served as an associate superintendent in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and academic superintendent of middle schools in Memphis, Tennessee.

Kathy Tunheim, B.A. '79, political science, was named Governor Dayton's senior adviser for job creation, an unpaid position. She will continue as CEO of Tunheim Partners, a public relations firm she founded, and as president of IPREX Worldwide, a network of leading PR agencies.

Four of the 12 U of M alumni honored this year with UMAA Alumni Volunteer Service Awards hail from CLA.

Paul Taylor

CLA's nominee was Paul A. Taylor, B.A. '61, economics. He has served the University for many years as a volunteer: on the CLA Career Services Advisory Board (1987-1992), the CLA Alumni Society Board (1997-2003), the University's Council on Public Engagement (2003-2006), the Department of English Advisory Committee (2004-present); and as an active advocate in the Legislative Network and on the University of Minnesota Alumni Association's Advocacy Committee for more than 18 years. He is currently the principal in the Masters Alliance, a business-consulting firm, where he advises the senior management of his clients, and specializes in business development, project management, and long-range planning and strategic assessment.

Other CLA graduates receiving the volunteer award were:

Bernadine Joselyn, B.A. '78, humanities, M.A. '01, public affairs, nominated by the Humphrey Institute; she is the director of public policy and engagement at the Charles K. Blandin Foundation.

Bruce W. Mooty, B.A. '77, sociology, J.D. '80, nominated by the U of M Alumni Association and Law School. He is a principal at Gray Plant Mooty law firm, and was the immediate past president of the U of M Alumni Association.

Sandy Morris, B.A. '64, journalism, M.A. '72, educational psychology, nominated by the College of Design; she is past president of the Goldstein Museum of Design Board of Directors.

33633|33628
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:39:44 -0600Can We Imagine Peace?

Imagination—one of the liberal arts' most valuable tools—allows human beings to transcend present realities and shape the future. Three scholars investigate fundamental components of peace and envision new ways to make it a reality.

So here we are, at the end of the new millennium's first decade. We've peered back at the dawn of creation, found water on Mars. We've mapped most of the human genome, can watch the brain at work, know how to replace hearts, clone pigs from stem cells, and smash protons. We have smart phones. And vacuum cleaners with minds of their own.

But the thing we claim to desire most continues to elude us.
Peace. And its twin sister, justice.

Peace exists, but only ephemerally, vanishing as quickly as a bullet can escape the barrel of a gun. War, political and economic terrorism, and ethnic conflict continue to wrack the globe as they have from time immemorial. In fact, our last century was our bloodiest. It was also the one in which we first applied practical imagination to what was previously unimaginable--how to achieve our own self-destruction--and then made the tool to do it: the atom bomb.

The idea of the atom, the radical component of all matter, originated long ago where all of our endeavors do: in the human imagination, that astonishing place in the mind we visit when we need to transcend limitations.

The atom was just a notion in the 5th century B.C.E., when Democritus and Leucippus came up with the theory of "atomism." It was 2,300 years before that child of the mind actually shook hands with reality--first with Einstein and others who produced a description of the atom's shape, size, behaviors, and relationships, then when J. Robert Oppenheimer and colleagues split the atom, framing its overarching presence in a way that changed the world forever. Its release spawned the dark clouds of war, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and mutually assured destruction.

Perhaps, reader, you see this question coming: can we do the same thing with the elusive concept of peace? Are we able to take the first step--to imagine peace, a sustained peace, and make tools of mind and body that might help us create it? Can we figure out what peace is made of, discover its "atomic" components and release its power so that at last we can intentionally, knowledgeably, make peace?

The faculty members we feature in this story are doing just that: imagining peace. They are committed to the belief that with knowledge, creativity, and commitment we can, indeed, realize peace and justice.

Their research questions are radical--about the nature of peace, about the "atoms" that make it up and that just might be amenable to some kind of rearrangement or condition that will allow peace to settle in and stay awhile.

Imagination--one of the liberal arts' most valuable tools--allows us to transcend present realities and shape the future. Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."

In her early 60s Lucille Broderson, '37, English, returned to CLA to study poetry. Now 94, she is winning prizes for her work, and has published her first book, But You're Wearing a Blue Shirt the Color of the Sky.

She read a selection of her poems at an event at the University of Minnesota
Bookstore in Coffman Union on December 2, 2010. Her mentor, Michael Dennis
Browne, now CLA professor emeritus, introduced her.

Curtiss M. Anderson, B.A. '51, journalism, died of cancer on May 22, 2010 at his home in Tiburon, Calif. He was 81. Anderson had a career in magazines: he was editor-in-chief of Ladies Home Journal and the American Express magazine, Venture. As editor of magazine development at Hearst Magazines, he helped develop Country Living, Smart Money, and a Sunday magazine for The San Francisco Examiner. He reached beyond the magazine world, becoming an editor at Hallmark Cards, and helping its founder, Joyce C. Hall, write his autobiography. Anderson's coming-of-age memoir, Blueberry Summers: Growing Up at the Lake, was published in 2008 by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. One reviewer described it as "a Garrison Keillor tale as told by Truman Capote."

Samuel Burke

Samuel M. Burke, CLA professor emeritus of South Asian studies, died on September 10, 2010, in Watlington, Oxfordshire, England, at the age of 104.
The National, the United Arab Emirates' English-language newspaper, called Burke "an incorruptible jurist, one of Pakistan's first ambassadors, an academic and an author."

A brilliant student of history, Burke was one of the few Indians to become a senior official—a High Court judge—in the elite Indian Civil Service established under the British Raj.

During the partition of India in 1949, massive upheaval and mutual slaughter of some one million Muslims and Hindus ensued as the country fractured into India and Pakistan. Burke remained impartial, retiring from the court and refusing to serve either government, despite requests to do so from both sides.

He eventually chose to help Pakistan's first foreign minister establish the Pakistani Foreign Service, and was named High Commissioner (ambassador) to India and the United Nations. He eventually served in 11 countries, including England, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Thailand, Canada, and the United States.

In 1961 he resigned from the foreign service to assume CLA's new chair in South Asian studies, and began writing books on the history of India and Pakistan. He taught until 1975, moving to England with his English-born wife, Louise.

Burke received the Star of Pakistan Award, Pakistan's highest civilian honor, from President Ayub Khan, and a commendation from Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for his book Akbar the Greatest Mogul. Other books include Pakistan's Foreign Policy, and The British Raj in India.

Maryanna Manfred

Maryanna Manfred, B.A. '42, journalism, died December 6, 2010, in Sioux Falls, S.Dak. She was 90 years old. Manfred, a freelance editor and writer of poetry, book reviews, and news features, was for 33 years the first reader of the novels of her husband, the late Frederick Manfred. She also worked as a supervisor for the American Research Bureau. Manfred was an editorial consultant on histories of the Democratic Party and Unitarian Universalism in South Dakota, and a volunteer for Common Cause, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Cousteau Society.

Eugene Larkin

Eugene Larkin, B.A. '46, M.A. '49, art, died on November 13, 2010, at the age of 89, in South Bend, Indiana, from complications due to pneumonia. His woodcuts and other prints appear in the collections of the Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Art Institute of Chicago and the Weisman Art Museum. Frequent subjects included musicians, leaves, and trees; he created a series of wood cuts based on William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Best known as a lithographer, Larkin figured on the national scene as a teacher and promoter of lithography education. He was the author of Design: The Search for Unity, a text on basic design and visual composition. Larkin headed the printmaking department and chaired the fine arts division at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and from 1969 to 1991 was a U of M professor in what was called at the time the Department of Design, Housing and Apparel. He also served on the Weisman Art Museum Board of Directors.

Roger Pierce Miller

Associate Professor Roger Pierce Miller, geography, died May 30, 2010, from complications following a motorcycle crash he had en route to see his only son, Jonah, graduate from Harvard University. He was 59 years old.

Miller joined the Department of Geography in 1980, specializing in urban history and city planning in North America and Europe, especially Sweden. A master teacher with a colorful personality, he was named to the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers and was a favorite with students.

His immensely popular signature class, The City in Film, sprang from deep interests in literature and the cities of the world, but he had other interests, too. His family called him a Renaissance man with a puckish sensibility.He was the director of graduate studies in the master of liberal studies program, taught in several units besides geography, and served on many committees over the years. He was active in the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs, an organization dedicated to education for social justice, and chaired its academic programs committee. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and before coming to Minnesota taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Memorials can be made to the Ralph Brown Fund (# 2308), which supports and encourages graduate and undergraduate research and study.Go to www.cla.umn.edu/giving.

Questioning established patterns of thought: that is the audacious core of the liberal arts. The Winton Chair fosters such audacity, bringing world scholars to CLA whose work "challenges cultural paradigms and represents important breaks from dominant patterns of thought."

Currently in residence under the program are two such bold thinkers: renowned Somali novelist and playwright Nuruddin Farah, and philosopher William C. Wimsatt. During their three-year residencies they will engage with CLA students and researchers, and deliver public lectures.

Farah's works were barred in his native Somalia under the Siyad Barre regime, which was known for its human rights abuses, and he was forced into exile after writing a novel about cross-cultural love. In Somali and English, he explores themes ranging from the patriarchal clan system and exploitation of women, to the parallels between colonial practices and authoritarian regimes in post-colonial Somalia, to long-standing tribal disputes that continue to plague Somalia today.

One of the most exciting aspects of his tenure at CLA will be the opportunity to refine and stage a production of his new play, a Somali version of Antigone—involving many collaborative partners and close work with the Twin Cities Somali community.

William C. WimsattPhoto by Everett Ayoubzadeh

Wimsatt is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Chicago. His work centers on the philosophy of the inexact sciences—biology, psychology, the social sciences, the history of biology, and the study of complex systems. During his first semester in CLA, Wimsatt led a weekly discussion group focused on his book, Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality.

Wimsatt addresses the challenges that human beings, limited creatures that we are, face in understanding an infinitely complex world, and how the process of error and correction is central to learning. His cheeky concept: "Maybe error is okay."

Benefactors David Michael Winton and Penny Rand Winton established the chair in 1987 to encourage "innovative, distinctive research in the liberal arts."

First the Minnesota research team discovered they could use a special kind of brain scan to identify, with 95 percent accuracy, people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, as they recently announced in the Journal of Neural Engineering, they can actually watch a brain as it experiences PTSD: it becomes hyperactive in the right temporal lobe, which is responsible for memory.

Hyperactivity in the composite brain image on the left indicates PTSD. The composite on the right shows brain activity among people who are recovering from the disorder.

Psychology professor Brian Engdahl and his medical school colleague Apostolos Georgopoulos, M.D., used Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure magnetic fields in the brains of 80 people with PTSD; 18 of them were in remission, and 284 were healthy. Many of the sufferers had served in the military in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

They found clear differences in brain activity among the groups—something that X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs have been unable to do. They also observed that the telltale hyperactivity continued in the brains of the PTSD sufferers even when they were not consciously remembering past trauma, indicating that the terrifying memories could return at any moment.

Engdahl and Georgopoulos, both members of the Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, hope the findings will help them develop better kinds of treatment for PTSD, and encourage more veterans who suffer from it to seek help.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Raptor

Lewis Carroll could well have been summoning primeval body-wisdom when he penned his famous nonsense poem "Jabberwocky."

It turns out that an early primate, the Proconsul ape—thought to be an ancestor of both humans and chimps, actually was a meal of choice for the "jabberwocks" of 16 to 20 million years ago: the raptors.

An archaic mammal called the creodont apparently enjoyed a good supper of Proconsul, too.

Kirsten Jenkins, a fifth-year Ph.D. anthropology student, uncovered this chapter of pre-human family history while digging on Rusinga Island, Kenya, which, during the Miocene age, was a reforested area on the side of a large volcano.

Carroll's Jabberwock

Presenting at the 70th annual conference of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Pittsburgh, Jenkins said that tooth pits and probable beak marks on the fossils provide direct evidence of damage from raptor beaks and talons from creodont teeth. "I hope to better understand these ancient predator-prey relationships and thus possible selection pressures on Proconsul."

Up until now it has been believed that early humans evolved as aggressive hunters, but if Jenkins is correctly interpreting the defleshed, chomped, and gnawed Proconsul bone fossils, they may also have been the hunted.

Since Europe's Middle Ages, Islam has shared with the West remarkable contributions to science, architecture, art, and the humanities. A February conference, sponsored by the Religious Studies program with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, took a closer look at this centuries-old exchange of ideas.

Catalan Atlas of 1375 (detail)One of the most important maps of the medieval period, this section of the Catalan Atlas shows how cultural boundaries were crossed in the exchange of knowledge between the Islamic world and Europe. The original Catalan Atlas is housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

"Shared Cultural Spaces: Islam and the West in Arts and Sciences" brought together prominent scholars from across the country and from many local colleges. Speakers included keynoters Anouar Majid (addressing "The Inhumanity of Orthodoxy") and Wadad Kadi, an expert on Islamic political thought. Speakers from CLA included professors Catherine Asher (art history), William Beeman (anthropology), Nabil Matar (English), and Ali Momeni (art), and Religious Studies program director Jeanne Kilde.

The conference premiered Journey, a stage adaptation of the 12th century masterpiece Hayy ibn Yaqzan, by the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and physician Ibn Tufayl. Described by Beeman as a compendium of many aspects of Islamic science in the context of a parable, it is a story about a boy raised in the wild by a deer. Its empiricism profoundly influenced not only Arabic and Islamic thinkers, but also Europeans including Defoe, Newton and Kant, and heralded the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Other conference sessions addressed science (especially astronomy), aesthetics and architecture, and how new media is shaping how Muslims tell their stories.

Editor's note:The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation recently announced its 180 Fellowships recipients for 2011. Among them was Ananya Chatterjea. She will be using the fellowship to launch a quartet of evening-length dance pieces exploring how women in global communities of color experience and resist violence.

ChatterjeaThe body doesn't lie.Photo by Darin Back

Watch an interview with Chatterjea

Like her CLA colleagues, Ananya Chatterjea is on a quest for knowledge. What separates her from others is where she finds it. "Whatever it is I know," says Chatterjea, "I know most certainly in my body."

It may seem a curious declaration from a scholar. Many academicians regard knowledge as something discovered "out there"—beyond the bounds of the self. Yet for Chatterjea, associate professor in the University's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, the territory "out there" is populated not by bits of disembodied knowledge, but by millions of embodied lives being lived.

For her, distilling the human meaning from the raw material of those lives—transforming stark fact into the deeply known—is something only the crucible of the body can do.

"It is hard work," Chatterjea says. "But what the body deeply knows, it can reveal to others. This, really, is the essence of dance."

This is the idea that energizes Chatterjea's work. Raised in Kolkata, she grew up studying the performance of Odissi, India's most ancient dance form. The style is associated with the Tantric tradition of goddess-worship and invokes the intensity of female sensuality as an emblem of the spiritual passion for God.

Yet even as Chatterjea perfected the Odissi form as a girl, she noticed contradictions of its artistic content in her surroundings: "I was raised in a culture divided by class and gender," she recalls, "one in which violence against women was an everyday reality."

This dissonance between the ideal and the real—found in every culture—led Chatterjea to reject conceptions of dance as a superficial mode of entertainment. Over time, her feminist and egalitarian instincts and her conviction that dance could become an instrument for social justice merged into an unshakable passion. After finishing two degrees in literature in Kolkata, Chatterjea moved to New York's Columbia University to earn a master's degree in dance and then pursued her doctorate at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Ananya ChatterjeaAssociate professor of Theatre Arts and DanceIn the studio, Barbara Barker Center for DancePhoto by Darin Back

By the time she arrived in Minnesota in 1998, Chatterjea had found a medium for her message. Years of experimentation led her to develop a distinctive choreography that merged deconstructions of classical Odissi style with the liveliness of Indian street theater and the rituals of yoga and Indian martial arts.

This unique artistry quickly found a place in the University's dance program, which Chatterjea directs, and became the "dance language" of Ananya Dance Theatre, the company of women of color she founded upon her arrival.

Surely anyone who sees Chatterjea's company onstage will appreciate how dance can open minds to new ideas.

In 12 years of performance in the Twin Cities and beyond, the company has conjured bodily declarations of joy and lament, of struggle and beauty. It has danced the stories of religious fundamentalism and domestic violence, environmental degradation and the oppression of women, the stealing of land and the brutality of war. Often the company provides study guides to accompany its offerings and conducts post-performance discussions about the issues it explores.

Chatterjea and her fellow dancers often perform for packed houses, and she's heartened by the audience response. "A dance performance is a moment of live connection among human beings. It's an especially powerful moment in a world overwhelmed by 'virtual' connection, by technology. And in the end, all that remains of a dance performance is that flash of light, that experience of connection with the audience."

This is what Chatterjea cares about most: coaxing her audiences to recognize the world's great wrongs—the first step, she knows, toward eventually setting things right. Her latest project is a four-performance examination of the suffering women endure as the world's powerful plunder the Earth for natural lucre—represented by mud, gold, oil, and water—and of their resistance to these "violences."

The first installment, Kshoy!/Decay, was performed at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis last September. Invoking the metaphor of mud—land that holds fast to the body—the choreography conveyed the dispossession of women forced from their homes by the corporate clamor for land.This is Chatterjea's answer to injustice: to dance the truth of oppression into the minds and hearts of her audiences—and in the end, perhaps, to dance oppression itself into the dust. She has put her faith in the wisdom of the body, in its remarkable power to express "the truth we know yet cannot speak."

"I know that dance has the power to open minds and to change them," Chatterjea says. She knows it because she has danced it and witnessed it. So long as her body knows a truth that needs telling, she'll likely carry on.

>> Kate Stanley, B.A.'80, is a Minneapolis journalist. She was editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Daily from 1979 to 1980.

In an effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering 14 "critical need" languages, the U.S. State Department annually awards a number of foreign language instruction and cultural enrichment scholarships. They are highly competitive. Of the 575 students chosen this year, 11 are from the U of M—eight from CLA.

Students spend seven to ten weeks in intensive summer language institutes in countries where these languages are spoken. They are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.

Valerie Tiberius is all about happiness. A philosophy professor, she's spent years describing happiness and exploring the circumstances that produce it.

For her—for all of us—happiness is a substanial concept. In the United States, the pursuit of happiness is a right. Happiness drives personal relationships and serious politics. For lack of happiness, people hate and fight each other, and nations get swept into the black hole of war and ethnic conflict.

Some years back, having pondered the views of the ancients and of her contemporaries on the subject, Tiberius, the philosopher, took a rather unorthodox leap. She started swapping notes with psychologists. The venture acquainted her with the field of positive psychology, whose practitioners have spent decades investigating what makes people happy (and what doesn't) and how well (or poorly) people know themselves.

This inquiry led to her book The Reflective Life: Living Wisely Within Our Limits (Oxford University Press), which invokes empirical psychology in considering what makes for a good life, or happiness. She continued her work with the University of Chicago's acclaimed Defining Wisdom project, which is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. It helps philosophers like Tiberius, as well as psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, pharmacists, and other scholars investigate wisdom, its benefits, how to cultivate it, and how to apply it.

But Tiberius found that psychology's findings about happiness don't add up to a recipe for living well; some philosophy is in order. This is, she says, because "it partly depends on how one defines happiness"—a philosophical question. There is a difference between experiencing pleasure, and the happiness one associates with "a good life"—what the Greeks called eudaimonia.

Not that Tiberius knows what's best for the rest of us. That's a decision we must make for ourselves. "Most of us would like to be able to look back at how we've lived and honestly say that we did our best with what life dealt us," she's written. "[T]here are some things we can do to meet the goal of living a life that we can review with satisfaction--and this is the domain of wisdom."

Valerie TiberiusAssociate professor of PhilosophyIn her office, Heller HallPhoto by Darin Back

But what is wisdom? Her conclusion thus far is that wisdom is not purely cerebral. It merges rational and emotional intelligence. So our best tool for reaching wise conclusions is reflection, Tiberius says—but the right kind, and not too much. According to psychological research, human beings aren't terribly good at it.

"The rational self," she says, "makes inaccurate predictions about what we'll find satisfying, is plagued by biases, and has a tendency to distraction. When we try to be reflective about our choices, we end up confused about our reasons, and we choose things we don't ultimately like."

In the end, Tiberius urges not that we reflect more, but rather that we reflect wisely.

It's a formidable undertaking, of course, to reach into a folk concept like wisdom and pull out a list of its parts. Her approach is, with the help of two graduate students, to look into practices and ideas—ranging from values clarification and mindfulness to cognitive behavior therapy and emotional intelligence—that appear connected with wisdom.

Her work is significant because it explores a radically new tool people can use to make their lives happier and help them get along together—a new way to imagine ethics. Traditional ethics are based on principles that align with outcomes like good and evil, right and wrong. But Tiberius imagines an ethic based on using wise process to make decisions.

She knows this is a project of a lifetime, or two, or three. That doesn't bother her. "I often ask myself," she says, "what our culture would be like if we didn't have people asking these questions. Answering is important, but maybe not as important as asking.

"I think some of these philosophical questions—about what it means to have a good life, what it is to flourish, what it means to be wise—aren't really meant to have final answers."

>> Kate Stanley, B.A.'80, is a Minneapolis journalist. She was editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Daily from 1979 to 1980.

A "capacity to think big" is what got Steven Rosenstone his new job—chancellor of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, according to MnSCU trustee Duane Benson. Rosenstone will assume the new position August 1.

Currently the university's vice president for scholarly and cultural affairs and CLA professor of political science, Rosenstone has led a number of visionary projects, most recently the renovation of Northrop Auditorium, the U of M's Future Financial Resources Task Force (which he co-chaired), and new scholarship programs.

From 1996 to 2007 he was dean of CLA. Under his leadership, the college revamped the undergraduate experience, created state-of-the-art facilities and forged new partnerships with businesses, communities, and cultural and civic organizations. He was awarded the McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair for his service to the University.

MnSCU is a complex organization, comprising 32 state universities and community and technical colleges. It operates 54 campuses and serves some 277,000 students in credit-based courses and 157,000 students in non-credit courses.

33630|33628
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:14:13 -0600Caring, for Justice

By Kate Stanley

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=283020
283020

TrontoThe care system is broken.Photos by Darin Back

Whoever you are and whatever you do, says Joan Tronto, chances are you're being cheated. No matter how pleased you are with life, you're almost certainly not getting what you deserve. What does Tronto think you're missing? Your fair share of the experience of care—giving it and getting it.

This may seem a small matter, something on which you can take a pass without much fuss. But Tronto, a professor in the Department of Political Science, thinks opting out of either end of the care equation creates a world of trouble.

Tronto has spent much of her career writing about care—and she's nowhere near finished. In her view, care isn't a sentimental concept. It's a political one. Neither does she see it as an optional or peripheral human enterprise. It's a mainstay of existence, a requirement of the unspoken pact that enables societies to thrive.

Tronto's definition of care might surprise you: "It's everything we do to continually maintain and repair the world," she says, "so we can live in it as well as possible." That world, as Tronto sees it, "includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment."

This explains why trying to duck out of the care pact is such a mistake. For starters, receiving care isn't an optional experience: it's something we do for ourselves every day, when we can. The rest of the time—at the beginning of life, at its end and at many points in between—the care we need is provided by others.

Once we look at care from the perspective of recipients, it becomes pretty clear that shrugging off the duty to help give care just isn't fair. Yet many people do just that. In this society, Tronto points out, merely being male can get you a pass out of caring responsibilities. And many buy their way out by hiring proxy caregivers to tend to children, elders, and others who need care. The price of this purchase is far less than the service is actually worth. "If you were made to pay its true value," Tronto says, "you couldn't possibly afford it."

The clamor to avoid caregiving, and the refusal to pay caregivers well enough, destabilize the entire system. "It assures an unequal distribution of caregiving responsibilities that hurts everyone," Tronto says. "It has a bad effect on people who have to care too much and on those who care too little."

Joan TrontoProfessor of Political ScienceAt the Minnesota State CapitolPhoto by Darin Back

How, exactly? For the "free-riders," Tronto explains, it means missing out on the joys of caregiving and quite possibly on a fully developed capacity for intimacy. For those who must pick up the caregiving slack, she says, it means unbearable strain.

And for those who need care from others—a group that may include your kids or parents and that most of us will join sooner or later—this disequilibrium poses palpable danger: When too few caregivers must do too much for too little pay, the work of care may be dispensed inattentively, perfunctorily, resentfully, and sometimes not at all.

"Everyone realizes now that the care system we have is broken," says Tronto. "It's made up of patchworks of daycare for children and nursing care for elderly people. The workers aren't paid enough and can't do their work well. It just doesn't function." Given the lowly status of care, the poor are more likely to end up as caregivers, increasing the distance between them and those who are able to pay for their services.

Why hasn't this shambles of a care system been fixed? Tronto answers without a pause: "Politics has always involved activities beyond the realm of care, of the household, of the family. All that is considered beneath politics, really. And in this society, care comes after almost everything else. It's a result of our preoccupation with economic life: we measure too much only in money."

All of this could change, she says. In the end, all that's necessary is sufficient public resolve and an emphatic public voice. But how does a society even begin to solve a problem so vast?

Tronto has some starting points in mind. "There are two things we need to think about," she says. "The first is time. On average, Americans employed full time work 50-plus hours per week. That's too much. So the first thing we have to do is organize time so all people would be free to do care work." Tronto figures a 20-hour work week would be about right.

"That would mean we'd have to spend more of our resources on caring and on paying care workers more." Tronto grants. "We wouldn't be able to buy as much stuff as we do now. But stuff is really a substitute for care. People buy stuff to show care, but it doesn't work."

But changing the American work schedule won't be enough. "If all we do is give people more time," Tronto says, "men will spend more time in leisure activities and women will do more care." What's needed, she says, is a change in how men and women think about care.

Policy change is daunting enough, but how do we adjust attitudes? "You begin by talking it," she says. "You call attention to the fact that men and women both have responsibilities for care."

And the government can help, Tronto says, citing Sweden's move to encourage shared caregiving through its parenting-leave regulations. "If the father doesn't take parenting time," she explains, "the mother doesn't get as much time as she otherwise would." Changes in law often prompt changes in how people think.

It's an ambitious vision, but not an outlandish one. "This is a reform that would benefit everyone," Tronto says. "Such changes happen very slowly. But they happen."

>> Kate Stanley, B.A.'80, is a Minneapolis journalist. She was editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Daily from 1979 to 1980.

The Metrodome collapsed under 17 inches of snow, buses got stuck, flights were canceled and plows pulled off the roads. Here at the University, the campus closed for one day—but opened the next, December 12, to host CLA's fall 2010 commencement ceremony.

Only about 30 of CLA's 600 graduating seniors were unable to make it to the event, held in Northrop Auditorium.

Nuruddin Farah, the prominent African novelist currently a Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts, delivered the commencement address, calling attention to the community's investment in the new graduates:

I keep talking about your life...as though [it] is yours to do with what you please. However, let me wonder aloud and ask: how much of a young person's life is his or hers to do with what they please? Has it ever occurred to you that your life is as much yours as the bank in which you deposit your paychecks.... The truth is, you are a mere custodian of your life, which belongs, in big or small ways, to many other persons too. I propose that your life belongs, in part, to those who have invested in it: your parents, your guardians, your relatives, your peers, those of whom you're enamored and to whom you've committed yourself. In short, it belongs to anyone who has invested in your well-being from the instant you opened your lungs at birth until now.

You'll find century-old letters from half-mad lovers, pleas from lonely moms in the Old Country, accounts of communities emptying as the youth left Europe for the U.S., photos, newspapers, legal documents, and more, all of which shaped the lives of Minnesota immigrants—not to mention our own cultural legacy.

The IHRC, headed by professor Donna Gabaccia, has one of the largest collections of materials related to immigration and refugee life in the world. The collection is unique because it interprets U.S. immigration history through the stories of immigrants. This "Minnesota School" of scholarship was fostered in the early part of the century by professor and later dean of the Graduate School Theodore Blegen, and carried forward by historians including Hy Berman, Clarke Chambers, John Gjerde, and Rudolph Vecoli. (Vecoli, the IHRC's first director, was known to rummage for documents through the attics and basements of potential donors, according to his June 23, 2008, obituary in the New York Times.)

Alexander Granovsky

Holdings range from letters from Iron-Range Finns, Poles displaced after World War II, Italians in Chicago, and Liberian and Cambodian refugees, to newspapers and legal documents.

Lately the IHRC has been digitizing letters from the period 1850 to 1970 by and to immigrants, including letters written in languages other than English.

Peek Into the Past

1899 // Lucia Fazio Hobokan, N.J., to Alessandro Sisca (aka Riccardo Cordiferro), New York, N.Y.
"I had the strength to drag myself to the window and you didn't even look back. I wanted to cry out to you like a crazy woman, but the tears stopped me. Why did you hurt me so much? .... I would like to continue to write to you but my heart hurts terribly. If you don't mind. Tomorrow, wait for me at 3 pm on the 10th Street at the corner of Bleecker [sic] Street where the carriage passes. If tonight I don't die, tomorrow I will be there to speak with you for the last time. Will you come? You won't be cruel to that point, isn't that true?"

1911 // Bert Aalto of Big Falls, MinN. to Hilma Aerila, of Laitila, Finland
"Dear Hilma, I come to you as a flying leaf because the distance is too long for me to speak to you or to greet you with a warm hand. ...I have no girlfriend now, I guess I never have. I will tell you about my conditions here. I am working in the logging site again, I do all kinds of work in the forest and my salary is 3 dollars a month. Hear me Hilma, I am really planning to come to Finland next summer to have some fun. I have been here long enough. I want to see home again, and old friends. I don't know if I have any left; maybe I have lost them all. But it is you that I want to see, and I don't care for anybody else..."

1914 // Serhii Neprytsky-Hranovsky, Ukraine, to his brother Alexander Granovsky, Chicago
"Easter holiday we spent in sadness. When we returned from church and sat down to break fast, such a grief enveloped us that we cried bitterly. We were heart broken that with a heavy heart there were only three of us sitting around the table. During the holidays none of our relatives visited us except for the uncle from Bilokrynytsia. The kind of relatives there are in Berezhtsi, are those that just like to drink and not help in anything."

1957 // Anna Paikens to her son Edward Paikens, Minneapolis
"Why aren't you writing to me about yourself? I am asking you if you are married or just engaged. And if you are satisfied with your life? Son, I am interested in your life. ... You have lived there already 6 years. Are you happy in your married life? ....I don't know if I will ever see you. Write me if I can hope for seeing you ever again. How much I would want to meet and see you again. Most likely it is just a dream, which cannot be fulfilled."

1950s // Ken Enkel, Minneapolis, to Taisto Elo
Minnesota readers of a certain age will remember attorney Ken Enkel—the fierce, fiery, bushy-browed defender of civil liberties. During the McCarthy era he defended, among others, Taisto Elo, a Finnish lumberjack from Beaver Bay who was eventually deported under the McCarran-Walter Act for having been a member of the Communist Party—for two months—two decades earlier. (Others deported under the act included poet Pablo Neruda, novelists Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, and Gabriel García Márquez, philosopher Michel Foucault, and Pierre Trudeau, the future prime minister of Canada.) See his letters at z.umn.edu/2vq.

I recently heard a group of really smart undergraduates talk about what brought them to CLA. The list of "competitors" for these students was a kind of who's who of universities—Chicago, North Carolina, Berkeley, and Northwestern, to name but a few. So why CLA? One reason stood out: the amazing professors.

The students talked about the thrill of learning from professors who were always ahead of the curve in their fields, being inspired to burrow into subjects they'd never even thought about before, and being invited to collaborate on research projects that just could end up changing the world. And they stressed again and again how much their professors—and yes, their TAs, too—cared about students and went out of their way to spend quality time with them.

It's easy to take for granted the brilliance and stature of our faculty. After all, they're part of the web and weave of CLA life. But the conversations I heard got me thinking: What makes them so exceptional? And why do they work so hard—teaching, doing research, writing books, creating art, advising and mentoring students, and serving the University in so many ways? It's certainly not the money. Most of them could earn far more with their talents in private industry.

I think the answer is simple: it's a labor of love. They love learning and discovery, and even more, they love sharing what they know with their colleagues and students, and learning from them as well. And they love seeing their discoveries take root in the world, transforming lives and communities. That's the ultimate jackpot.

But all of this is in jeopardy. The CLA 2015 Report warns that the risk of a "slide into mediocrity" is very real, given the enormous fiscal and political challenges we face. And yet, we remain optimistic. We truly believe in our own hearts that "CLA is the University's beating heart." How do we keep that heart beating? With a course of treatment that includes bold interventions like the 62 strategies recommended in the report.

For some of us, the treatment might feel a little like major surgery—to get better, we'll have to feel some pain, not to mention anxiety. But we're absolutely dedicated to the kind of inside-out transformation and renewal that will strengthen our college for the long haul. And driving us toward the fifteen goals outlined in the report is our core commitment to teaching and learning.

In the smaller, student-centric college that we envision, every student will have access to gifted and committed faculty members throughout their education.

That means we must build faculty capacity even as we shrink our college and realign our programs to address 21st-century realities. Just as "the liberal arts are the very core and essence of academic learning," CLA faculty are the "core and essence" of our college. We may define "best" in many different ways, but we probably all agree that no college can be "best" without a great faculty.

We're at a pivot point. As the economy took a dive in 2007-09, faculty raids subsided. We are now seeing a resurgence of raids, especially by private universities with deeper pockets. This is a serious challenge for CLA. We simply can't buttress our faculty with public dollars alone.

This is where you come in. We're asking you, our alumni and friends, to partner with us in new creative ventures to recruit and retain the A-list faculty everybody's clamoring for. And I don't mean just the academic superstars; I mean all of the brilliant, hard-working scholars and teachers whose lights could glow a whole lot brighter if they only had the resources. Just imagine a special research fund, perhaps $5,000-$10,000 for each of three years, helping a CLA scholar get a pathbreaking book published and into the hands of students; or a major gift for an endowed professorship or chair providing ongoing support for the scholarly and creative work that our students are so pumped about.

If you love learning, if you put stock in what those students are saying, if you care about public higher education, and if you care about the future of CLA and the University of Minnesota, this is your moment, and ours. It's time for all of us to step up and do what we can to help reinvent CLA for the decades ahead, so that it can be the strong, innovative, intellectually rich, student-centric college that we are all so proud of. I'd love to talk with you.

Each of us in the CLA community plays a role in growing and strengthening the college we love.

Donors help the college realize its highest ambitions.

"We've always felt music education is important and needs support. If the arts, in general, aren't part of your life when you are young, when will they be?" –Wayne and Meg GisslenPhoto by Trish Grafstrom

Those listed below have made extraordinary contributions:

They've created hundreds of scholarships and fellowships that keep CLA's doors open to more than a thousand students each year;

They've established dozens of academic chairs and professorships that help us recruit and retain top faculty;

They've fueled discovery through dedicated research and outreach funds;

They've invested in CLA's educational infrastructure by improving facilities for the creative and performing arts, languages, and social sciences.

In July the University will have a new president, Eric Kaler; the state has new leadership; we are charting a dynamic course for the new century with CLA 2015. As we move into this new era, we are grateful for the continued loyalty, trust, and support of our donors.

Thank you for joining us in creating the CLA of tomorrow.

To see a more comprehensive list of annual donors to CLA, please visit the donor roster.

Shrouds of White Earth

Gerald Vizenor

State University of New York Press, Albany, 2010 / This phenomenal little book is called a novel; it reads like a prose poem, and might be a fictionalized autobiography of an artistic spirit living in two cultures. There isn't a line in it that is unbeautiful. Perhaps it is a kind of psalm, a prayer reaching for truth wherever it might occur--in laments, praise, mystical experiences, in a faint story line from history. The protagonist is a 70-year-old American Indian artist. The setting is mostly Minnesota and the White Earth Reservation, but we also visit Paris. The subject is art, freedom of expression, and authenticity. The matter is mixed, in the way of magical realism, but Shrouds of White Earth admits even more variety: real people and fictional ones, animals, esthetics, mysticism, eros, morality, shaminism--all equally entitled occupants of the same world. -MP

Vizenor, B.A. '60, child development, is Distinguished Professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He previously taught in CLA's American studies program. He is a recipient of the American Book Award and the Sundance Festival's Film-in-the-Cities Award.

Dogfight, A Love Story

Matt Burgess

Doubleday, 2010 / Like a West Side Story set in 2001, Dogfight: A Love Story takes place in New York City against a backdrop of mixed ethnicities, and is driven by youth rivalries and a high-risk love affair. But while WSS was the dramatic vision of mature artists distantly fascinated by youth gangs of New York, DLS is by a 28-year-old who grew up, one might say, on location. The story unfolds over a weekend in Queens, during which 19-year-old Alfredo Batista, a small-time drug dealer, stages a welcome-home for his brother Tariq, newly released from prison. It's not a purely joyous event, however, since there is some question as to whether Alfredo figured in Tariq's arrest, and there is no question that he has made Tariq's girlfriend, Isabel, pregnant. WSS was tragic and romantic; Burgess's story is tragic as well, but also gritty, affectionate, and hopeful. He doesn't seem to think tragedy is unconditionally terminal; life goes on and humor happens. His characters are tender-tough and memorable, the plot fast and clever. Bets are on for when Dogfight becomes a movie. -MP

The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks: Poems of Loss and Renewal by Minnesota Poets

Ted Bowman and Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, co-editors

Nodin Press, 2010 / The poems in this collection, by some of the crème de la crème of Minnesota poets past and present, reflect on losses from illness, disability, death, divorce, war, and domestic violence--as well as on the saving graces of healing, happiness, and the restoration of a whole life. Included are current and former English department faculty members Patricia Hampl, John Berryman, James Wright, Michael Dennis Browne, Madelon Sprengnether, and Ray Gonzalez, other well-known figures such as Bill Holm, Phebe Hanson, Deborah Keenan, Robert Bly, Wang Ping, Louise Erdrich, Thomas McGrath, and Joyce Sutphen, and still others published for the first time. -MP

Johnson, M.A. '92, Ph. D. '98, English, recently-retired lecturer in the English department, now teaches in the Office of Distance Learning. Bowman has taught at the U of M in family education.

The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics

Walter F. Mondale, with David Hage

Scribner, 2010 / If you are reading this magazine, chances are your life has been affected by former Vice President Walter Mondale, whose public service has been a feature of politics in this state and nation for more than four decades. His book is a readable, down-to-earth memoir of that long career. It is also an argument for a liberalism based on the values and mature perspective of a man who can say, for example, with genuine humility: "But I've been close to power, and I know the temptations a president faces." He writes, among other things, of civil rights battles, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis, and his six-day run at the Senate in the stead of Senator Paul Wellstone, who was killed mid-campaign in a plane crash. Throughout, his focus is on achieving fairness and intelligent deliberation in the public arena; you see it especially when he writes with passion about the U.S. Senate. Mondale pulls no punches--you are clear where he stands; but he writes with grace, modesty, kindness--and refreshing candor. -MP

Vice President Mondale, B.A. '51, political science, J.D. '56, remains engaged with the University of Minnesota, especially via lectures and forums.

The Grace of Silence: A Memoir

Michele Norris

Pantheon, 2010 / Michele Norris, the NPR news host, has written movingly of her family and how it was affected by racism post-World War II and during Jim Crow. Particularly poignant is the through-thread story of the quiet heroism of her father, falsely accused of a crime and shot by a white police officer, even as he simply "aspired to be ordinary." Norris appreciates and honors the grace with which this black family did the dance we all do with the truths of our lives--now engaging, now distancing, sometimes singing and sometimes silent--in order to survive and prepare for their children a path "uncluttered by their pain." Is it better to learn the truth? Norris thinks yes, and ends this concise and elegantly written book urging us to do just that. -MP

Norris, B.A. '05, journalism, is the host of National Public Radio's evening news program, "All Things Considered." She has earned Emmy and Peabody awards, and the University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award.

America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation

Elaine Tyler May

Basic Books, 2010 / Elaine Tyler May was only 12 years old in 1960, the year the FDA approved "the pill." But her mother was an activist who established free birth control clinics in Los Angeles. And her father, Dr. Edward Tyler, who ran clinical tests of the pill, had held up its approval because he was concerned about significant side effects that weren't being addressed by the manufacturers. Young Elaine knew more about oral contraceptives than most kids her age. Her insider knowledge enhances this very readable history of the pill and its impact--good and bad--on the lives of women, politics, and society. Its greatest effect, she argues, was to make it possible for women to have both a family and a career. -KO

May, Regents Professor of American studies and history, has served as president of both the American Studies Association and the Organization of American Historians.

Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America

Erika Lee and Judy Yung

Oxford University Press, USA, 2010 / From 1910 to 1940, more than half a million people sailed through the Golden Gate, hoping to start new lives in America. But they did not all disembark in San Francisco; most were ferried across the bay to the Angel Island Immigration Station. For many, this was the real gateway to the United States. For others, it was a prison and their final destination before being sent home. Lee and Yung uncover the stories of these surprisingly diverse immigrants through extensive new research, immigration records, oral histories, and inscriptions on the barrack walls. Readers learn of Chinese "paper sons," Japanese picture brides, Korean refugee students, South Asian political activists, Russian and Jewish refugees, Mexican families, Filipino repatriates, and many others from around the world. This first comprehensive history of the Angel Island Immigration Station not only commemorates its 100th anniversary, but also helps today's reader understand America's complicated relationship to immigration, a story that continues today. -KO

Eric Kaler, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Stony Brook University, New York, has been named the University of Minnesota's 16th president. He will take office on July 1, 2011, succeeding Robert Bruininks, who is returning to a faculty position after nearly a decade of service as president.

Eric KalerCourtesy of Stony Brook University

Kaler, 54, earned his Ph.D. at the U of M in 1982 in chemical engineering. He is only the second U of M alum to become its president.

"The University of Minnesota has held a special place in my heart," he said. "This is an institution with an amazing history of achievement and a central place in the hearts of Minnesotans, but there are some enormous challenges on the horizon. It is truly humbling and a true honor to have this level of confidence bestowed upon me. [My wife] Karen and I look forward to getting to know this university—and this state—even better in the coming months."

Asked at one of the on-campus public interviews what role he thought the liberal arts should play at the university, he said the liberal arts are "the reason there is a university....It's an absolute core competency, and we have to protect it. I will invest in it, and they will not wane. On my watch, that will not happen."

He also commented on the CLA 2015 Committee Report to Dean Parente. "I'm extremely impressed by the recent report by the College of Liberal Arts. It outlines a clear concept on how the liberal arts should be shaped in the 21st century. I share much of what [the authors] want to do. They're committed to doing things more efficiently."

Kaler's career has been called meteoric. He received his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1978, and after earning his doctorate in Minnesota he went to the University of Washington to become an assistant and then an associate professor of chemical engineering. In 1989 he moved to the University of Delaware, chaired its Chemical Engineering Department and became dean of the College of Engineering. In 2007 he landed at Stony Brook, a highly ranked research university enrolling some 24,000 students, as provost and vice president.

Last year he achieved one the highest professional distinctions in his field, election to the National Academy of Engineering. He holds 10 U.S. patents; his research interests are surfactant and colloid science, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

His honors include the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award from the American Society of Engineering Education, and the American Chemical Society Award in Colloid or Surface Chemistry.

Joanne Miller and Dara Strolovitch, political science: Best Paper Award from American Political Science Association's Political Organizations and Parties Section. "Networking the Parties: A Comparative Study of Democratic and Republican National Convention Delegates in 2008" was co-authored by Seth Masket, University of Denver, and Michael Heaney, University of Michigan.

Shawn Treier, political science: Gregory Luebbert Article Award from American Political Science Association for "Democracy as a Latent Variable," co-authored by Simon Jackman, Stanford University.

Wendy Zaro-Mullins, music: 2010-2011 Community Seed Grant by College Music Society for Exploring Careers in Vocal Music: The Sacred Singer's Solo Vocal Workshop.

University Awards

William Iacono, psychology, has been named a Regents Professor—the highest level of recognition the University gives to its faculty. Iacono is a pioneer in the neurobiological approach to the study of mental disorders and one of the world's leading clinical psychologists/experimental psychopathologists. He has made seminal contributions to adolescent and adult developmental psychopathology, substance abuse, psychiatric epidemiology, behavior genetics, and lie detection, and is considered to be one of the world's foremost research scientists in these areas. Best known for the Minnesota Twins Family Study, he ranks among North America's most cited and productive clinical psychologists.

CLA Awards

Graduate Student Awards

Carla Manzoni, Spanish and Portuguese: Compton International Fellow for her work on the independent, democratizing films of women of the Southern Cone of South America.

M. Christine Marquis, classical and Near Eastern studies: Women's Classical Caucus 2010 award for best orally-delivered pre-Ph.D. paper for "Juno and Amata: Powerful Wives and Political Disorder in the Aeneid."

Sheryl R. Lightfoot, political science: 2010 Best Dissertation Award from American Political Science Association's Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section for Indigenous Global Politics.

Lauren Wilcox, political science: 2010 award for Best Graduate Student Paper from International Studies Association's Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section, for "Explosive Bodies: Suicide Bombing as an Embodied Practice and the Politics of Abjection."

Elizabeth M. Weixel, English: Best Graduate School Dissertation in arts and humanities category for "The Forest and Social Change in Early Modern English Literature, 1580-1700."

Michael Vuolo, sociology: Best Graduate School Dissertation in the social and behavioral sciences and education area for "Legal Context and Youth Drug Use: A Multilevel Analysis of the European Union."

Unit Awards

CLA: participating in a three-year, $1.9 million Department of Health and Human Services grant awarded to the School of Dentistry for "Building Bridges to a Career in Dentistry for Disadvantaged Students." The grant aims at increasing diversity in the dental workforce, creating pathways for a dentistry degree through undergraduate degrees in CLA and the College of Biological Sciences.

Institute for Global Studies National Resource Centers: $1.2 million in U.S. Department of Education Title VI funding, over four years, for the European Studies NRC, including fellowships for foreign language graduate and undergraduate students, and $1.2 million for its International Studies NRC.

Asserting that CLA is "the beating heart" of the entire University, a blue-ribbon panel has recommended ways to maintain the college's academic excellence in the face of daunting fiscal challenges.

Over a year ago Dean James Parente appointed the 30-member panel of faculty, staff, and students, and in November they submitted their CLA 2015 Committee Final Report to Dean James A. Parente. It has earned praise inside and outside the University.

The report establishes how the futures of the CLA and the University are inextricably bound together: every major research university requires a strong liberal arts core, and CLA students make up fully half the student body on the Twin Cities campus. "The University of Minnesota aspires to become one of the top public research universities but can only do so with a strong College of Liberal Arts," the report says.

Photo by Kelly MacWilliams

It warns that yet another round of budget cuts would irreparably damage the academic quality that brings renown to the college and the University.

Just as importantly, the report identifies steps the college should take to protect and promote academic excellence. Among them:

Play to our academic strengths.

Focus on academic fields in which CLA excels and where we can create new, exciting, and path-breaking programs to address the rapidly changing world of the 21st century. By concentrating on programs of distinction we can create a clearer, more distinct identity and role for CLA in the world.

Become more student-centered.

Focusing on our strengths will mean we can offer students stronger programs and more coherent paths toward their degrees. But student-centricity has deeper goals, as well—namely, to make the disciplines actually matter to undergraduate students in their own lives, and help them understand the disciplines as tools to be applied in many ways in real life. A pre-med student, for example, should know how studying Asian or African American culture will help communication with patients; a student who is management-bound should know how to use psychology and statistics in real life. Student-centricity means helping undergraduates take purposeful responsibility for their own learning, and become creative, independent thinkers, and lifelong learners.

Increase educational, research, and outreach connections.

The 21st century will only become faster-paced and more complex, requiring faculty and students to become broader and more agile in our thinking. We can do this with more contact and collaboration across various academic fields, and with deeper engagement with the community, which will help us shape research and education around real-world issues and concerns.

Enhance learning and administration with technology.

The value of technology is its ever-growing capacity to make learning more accessible by connecting—with knowledge, teachers, and learners around the world. We must move even more actively into technology-enhanced learning in all of its emerging forms.

Pursue new revenue to enable CLA to pursue these goals.

Offer new degree programs that build on current courses, summer and evening classes, and e-classes for non-degree students; pursue more external grants and fellowships; engage more private philanthropy.

"There's a sea change in higher education taking place across the nation and here in Minnesota," Parente said, "necessitating that we be smaller and more focused. The report imagines a strong and distinctive college that is bold in its commitment to excellence, but it also responds to the serious fiscal constraints within which we will need to operate. It establishes a principled foundation for recommendations that will follow."

The report has received student support. The chair of CLA Student Board's Academics Committee, Regan Sieck, told the Minnesota Daily that members were glad to see the document take a student-centric approach. "A lot of the conversations were about what's best for the student and what will attract students to the school and keep them here," she said. The Daily called the report "a sobering yet optimistic look at the issues the college must confront in the next few years."

The CLA 2015 report quickly drew the attention of the University's new president-designate, Eric Kaler, when he came to campus for his final interviews; he called it "masterful."

In view of the central role CLA plays in the University's educational mission, the report recommends adjustments in some of the U's fiscal and academic policies—changes that would protect the integrity of the college.

To date CLA has cut 60 faculty positions—about 10 percent of the total, as well as 177 course sections, 27 staff positions and 10 percent of its supply budget. It has increased class sizes while teaching the same number of undergraduate students, admitted fewer graduate students, and moved administrative units into smaller spaces.

The CLA 2015 Committee was co-chaired by Gary Oehlert, statistics professor and CLA's Associate Dean for Planning, and Chris Uggen, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and chair of the sociology department.

Parente asked faculty, staff, and students to respond to the report either in writing or at town hall meetings that were held last fall. He expects implementation to begin in spring 2011.

For the full report, executive summary, and news coverage, go to z.umn.edu/2w2.

33629|33628
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:21:20 -0600Facts that Count

CLA: the big picture

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=236525
236525

The College

15,000
CLA educates about 15,000 undergraduates every year --more than any other Minnesota college, public or private, and about half of all students on the U's Twin Cities campus

Two-thirds of CLA programs are ranked among the Top 25 in the nation (National Research Council).

World-renowned Faculty teach and engage students in scholarly research.

CLA offers 73 majors and 73 minors in the social sciences, arts, and humanities, plus the option of an individually designed major.

Instruction is offered in more than 30 languages.

Some 2,200 different undergraduate courses are offered each year.

More than 50 freshman seminars are offered annually.

The University houses its service learning program in CLA; it is one of the best in the nation (U.S. News & World Report's Best Colleges 2010 List).

The Students

80% of recent U of M graduates work in Minnesota

7% are international students, who introduce perspectives from around the world to CLA classrooms.

More than 20% are students of color.

25% study abroad; the University is a national study-abroad leader.

2/3 come from Minnesota.

36% rank in the top 10% of their high school class.

$22,000
The cost of annual room, board, tuition, and books for Minnesota residents.

To earn that much money a student earning the minimum wage would have to work about 69 hours per a week, year-round.

29608|29615
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:20:00 -0600Stories that Inspire

Commitment to students and the liberal arts inspire a CLA-2015 planning project.By Dean James A. Parente, Jr.

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=236526
236526

Dean James Parente, Jr.Photo by Kelly MacWilliams.

Imagine the brain-power, the creativity! Imagine the experiences and perspectives that students from all over the world bring to our classrooms!

And imagine the impact that 15,000 smart, independent, original thinkers will have on the world, as they become the citizens and innovative leaders of tomorrow.

This issue of reach tells that undergraduate story.

It traces the adventures of some of the world's best young minds into challenging new worlds of inquiry: the underlying blueprint of language, DNA to cure cancer, hip hop and Shakespeare, health in the Amazon jungle, the aging brain, leadership as an out-of-body experience. There are subplots, too, about backbends and boxing, chutzpah and geekdom, dancing, drumming, and, of course, love.

Could we have been more fortunate than to have America's great storyteller, our own CLA alumnus Garrison Keillor, interview the students? He wanted to write about undergraduates who are successful because they take full advantage of what this great university has to offer.

The students inspired Garrison, and we hope they will inspire you, too.

Our other feature story is about a recent graduate who is already fulfilling the promise of his CLA education. He is inventing a new way for communities, from New York to Minneapolis to Seattle, to support their local artists. If it becomes a national trend, remember: he's one of our own and you read it here first!

Perhaps, as you read about these young people, you will remember that higher education here and nationally is facing a watershed moment. For example, this year, for the first time in history, more student dollars than State dollars are supporting the University of Minnesota--much of it in the form of student loans.

Why is public support for education dropping? It is partly because of the recession, partly because of a trend toward considering a college education an exclusively private good. But as the stories of our students and alumni so clearly illustrate, higher education benefits the public at least as much as it does the student.

In fact, the more complex our world, the more we need higher education. We especially need the liberal arts, which bring judgment, ethics, art and beauty, deep understanding of each other and of the full range of the human experience to bear on what might otherwise be a mechanical, materialistic world.

Our challenge will be to re-imagine and re-think the way we educate.

Exactly what will CLA of the future look like? The college has embarked on a planning process--CLA 2015--to reposition CLA to achieve higher levels of academic distinction during a period of shrinking resources and narrowing focus.

Uppermost in our minds will be the responsibility we have to the tens of thousands of students who place their trust in us to prepare them for the future. We shall not waver in our commitment to provide them excellent teachers; cogent, relevant and up-to-date curriculum; technological access to the world; quality advising; financial support; and the skills for successful professional lives--in other words, an exceptional educational experience to help them realize their highest ambitions.

For decades the body of economic, monetary, and fiscal policy produced by the Fed has been built upon and strengthened by research from the top-ranked University of Minnesota Department of Economics. Kocherlakota belongs to this tradition.

Theory for the real world

The current interplay between University of Minnesota research and the real-world policy produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis traces its roots to 1970, when a special studies group of U professors working to produce a theoretical model for the Fed to predict economic behavior inadvertently triggered a surge of research into "rational expectations" theory. Ideas from this research found their way into Federal Reserve policy, and the theoretical partnership took off.

Today, University researchers collaborate with Federal Reserve economists on the most varied questions of macroeconomic theory and monetary and fiscal policy. Over half of the U's economics professors have worked with the Fed's research department, and at any given moment several graduate students are also doing so.

Kocherlakota believes that progress in economics demands rigorous discipline and an often highly technical dialogue between data and theory. In brief--the relationship that exists between the University's Department of Economics and the Minneapolis Fed. He puts it this way: "Few if any important questions in economics can be addressed with data or theory alone. Good answers require that the two be used together."

Road to the Fed

Kocherlakota, 45, entered Princeton University at the age of 15, and at 23 received a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, specializing in the pricing of financial assets. After teaching at the University of Iowa and at Northwestern University, in 1998 he joined the economics faculty at the University of Minnesota.

He left for Stanford in 2002 but returned to Minnesota in 2005, becoming chair of the economics department and leading a recruiting effort that increased the number of professors and enhanced the department's national standing (it is now ranked 10th in the nation). He stepped down as chair in 2008 to devote time to research on how developed societies can best design their tax systems.

He had worked previously with the Fed--as a researcher from 1996 to 1998 and as a consultant at the time of his appointment to the presidency.

Challenges ahead

Kocherlakota now prepares for new challenges. He will lead one of the dozen federal district banks that set monetary policy for the nation. "For an economist who has spent his career working on issues related to macroeconomics, monetary policy, and finance," he says, "there can hardly be a better job than president of a Federal Reserve Bank."

In an article in Business Week Kocherlakota was said to bring a new perspective and unconventional voice to the national economic discussion: although he has embraced free-market economics, he has also written that government has a role in helping the nation recover from the recession, and believes that a healthy economy requires the Federal Reserve to supervise banks.

"I am excited about this new opportunity for many reasons, and the special bond between the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota is certainly one of them," Kocherlakota says. "I plan to keep the partnership between these two great institutions strong and vital."

He's a man in demand. As the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls--said to be the most important archaeological find of the 20th century--make a seven-month appearance at the Science Museum of Minnesota, Alex Jassen is serving as an academic adviser to the museum and speaking extensively around the community about the scrolls. An assistant professor of Classical and Near Eastern studies, his area of expertise is the literary heritage of Second-Temple Period Judaism (from the sixth to the first century B.C.E.), including the Scrolls.

"The Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World" exhibit comprises fragments from familiar books like the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Isaiah, as well as extra-scriptural documents from the first century B.C.E. like the Community Rule and a Temple Scroll. Schismatic Jews, perhaps Essenes, who lived in the settlement of Qumran by the Dead Sea, hid the papyrus and animal skin documents in caves. They were discovered by a shepherd in 1947, and are now archived and conserved by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Jassen, who has been awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, is currently researching the role of religious violence in the formation of the Qumran community.

The exhibition runs through October 24.

Visit Jassen's website to learn more about the scrolls, and for a list of his public lectures.

Given CLA's emphasis on life in the global community, many of its students study abroad. They're in the right place.

In its Open Doors report, the Institute of International Education ranks the Twin Cities campus third in the nation among research institutions in the number of students--2,521--who participate in this kind of life-changing experience. They work through the Learning Abroad Center, which offers some 300 programs in more than 70 countries, and helps with everything from program selection to disability services, financial planning to re-entry. It even has a Twitter account!

The campus also ranked high--20th--in the number of international students it has enrolled. In CLA's class of 2012, nearly eight percent of students come from outside the United States.

CLA's masters of fine arts (MFA) creative writing program ranks 14th out of 140 in the U.S., according to Poets & Writers magazine. The ranking was based on surveys of a group who are highly motivated to be objective, have done extensive research, and have much at stake in the results--current and prospective applicants.

CLA's highest sub-ranking was in the nonfiction category (eighth), and its lowest was for student-funding packages (27th). It ranked 10th for placement of grads in highly regarded post-MFA programs, a proxy for program quality and reputation. The program makes its home in the English department.

What do today's young people think is important in their relationships?

Romantic love, say three CLA sociologists writing in the August 2009 Journal of Marriage and Family--as well as other traditional values like faithfulness and commitment. This is the case, they assure us, despite the prevalence of cohabitation, divorce, and debates about same-sex marriage.

In their survey of 18- to 28-year olds, Professors Ann Meier and Kathleen Hull and Ph.D. candidate Timothy Ortyl did find modest but significant differences between men and women, however. Straight women valued faithfulness and lifelong commitment more than straight men did. And gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals had relationship values similar to those of heterosexual men.

"The pervasiveness of the romantic love ideal across gender and sexual identity groups," says Ortyl, "really speaks to how culturally ingrained it is."

Economists have discovered that, "just like animals in the wild," financial traders who take the greatest risks are the ones with the highest testosterone levels.

The most successful among them, however, have more than machismo. They also have the most experience and knowledge, so that, unlike their colleagues, they can tell which risks are smart and which are foolhardy.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in an article by University of Minnesota economics professor Aldo Rustichini, and Mark Gurnell and John Coates, both of Cambridge University, England. Coates, the lead investigator, is a Wall Street trading-floor manager-turned-neuroscientist.

Previous research had established that qualities like confidence, risk tolerance, vigilance, and quick reaction time are related to how much testosterone a fetus is exposed to in the womb. And for reasons not known, that level of exposure is recorded on the human body in the form of a ring finger that is longer than the index finger. This ratio, called 2D:4D, is commonly used to predict athletic success.

The research team wanted to know if, and to what extent, prenatal exposure to testosterone was a factor in the behavior of financial traders.

For their study they selected 49 males from a group of some 200 high-frequency traders from a trading floor in the City of London (only three of whom were female). They compared both the 2D:4D ratio and years of professional experience of each trader to his profit and loss record.

On average, traders with the most in utero testosterone exposure made 11 times more money than those with the least; while those with the most experience made 9.6 times more than the inexperienced ones, and were the most successful of all.

Researchers note that success on the adrenaline-charged trading floor requires skills that are not as important in other environments. Different types of financial trading reward other skills, such as the ability to relate well to clients, or to conduct a mathematical analysis of the market.

Beyond suggesting a predictor for a young man's success on Wall Street, the research shines a light on the perennial nature-versus-nurture question. It also offers a lens for understanding the often-baffling workings of the economy. Rustichini opines, for example, that "The bubble preceding the current crash may have been due to euphoria related to high levels of testosterone, or high sensitivity to it."

It appears the world of finance is more irrational than we might suppose, given its apparent sensitivity to what Rustichini calls "the hormone of irrational exuberance."

Different traits at different stages, according to psychology professor Deniz Ones.

Ones and two other industrial-organizational psychologists followed an entire country's cohort of medical students--600 Belgian students--through their seven years of medical study, assessing the "Big Five" personality dimensions of conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, openness to experience, and emotional stability.

They found that at the beginning of medical school--when students focus on basic science--the most-needed traits relate to cognitive ability. Introversion serves well at this stage, too, helping students exercise better study habits, focus, memorize, and prepare for class.

But as they advance into clinical practice, students increasingly need interpersonal as well as cognitive skills. Extroversion--which can be a liability in early years--becomes a definite asset. Qualities like assertiveness, warmth, and especially empathy help future doctors succeed with patients in complex, real-life settings.

The researchers also found that conscientiousness is an essential trait throughout every stage of medical training, playing a role both in mastery of information and in human relationships.

They concluded that med schools can greatly improve their admission processes by incorporating standardized personality tests--as opposed to unstructured interviews or references--in their admissions processes.

The study was published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. Ones's co-investigators were Stephan Dilchert, Ph.D.'08, of Baruch College (City University of New York) and Filip Lievens of Ghent University in Belgium.

If you studied language, literature, pedagogy, oratory, or psychology at the University, chances are you did so in that grand English Renaissance Revival building known as Folwell Hall.

Workers laid roof tiles during Folwell construction ca. 1906-07. Note the gargoyle in the background: the four gargoyles originally on the building disappeared within a year or two, probably damaged by water leaking into them.Photo from the Minnesota Historical Society

Besides giving shelter to your academic endeavors, Folwell also provided office space to, among others, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren, the second and third Poet Laureates of the United States, respectively. And Folwell is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

When Folwell was built in 1906--replacing Old Main after it burned down in 1904--it was considered the finest building of any state institution. It still is beautiful, with its keystoned arches and gables, pillars, parapets and porches, balustrades, chimneys (26 of them), granite stairs and wrought iron railings, polished wood, and Italian marble walls and floors.

Not to mention the cherubs, cats, eagles, gargoyles, and gophers peering down from the architraves to chastise students who arrive late to class.

It's a cool building--but its daily denizens say it's too darn hot.

Plus it lacks the digital technology that enables classrooms "to talk to the world" as students learn foreign languages and cultures. Good reasons why both the University and the State put its renovation at the top of their legislative priority lists. The bonding bill that passed and was signed into law by the governor in March includes $23 million for Folwell. Thousands of students and CLA supporters had contacted their legislators and the governor's office to support its passage.

According to Minnesota Student Association President Paul Strain, who minors in German studies and has had classes in Folwell for six semesters, "It's hot during the summer, it's hot during the fall, it's hot during the spring, and it's almost way too hot in the winter. The HVAC system is just a mess, and the electrical capabilities aren't really conducive to the new ways of teaching."

These are important considerations for a building where, among other things, students strive to perfect their Spanish or Japanese as they prepare to be tomorrow's teachers, translators, international traders, and attorneys.

Something about sharing a background with accomplished people makes success seem a little more attainable. That's why two highly accomplished members of the CLA community were invited to send off new graduates at commencement last fall and this spring.

Catherine Watson

Catherine Watson, nationally known travel writer, journalist--and CLA alumna--delivered the fall commencement address. Chief travel writer and photographer for the Star Tribune from 1978 until 2004, and author of two books of travel essays, she pioneered a genre of travel writing in which the author goes beyond geography to share personal insights. Watson was named both the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and the Society of American Travel Writers' Photographer of the Year.

"Life is a journey," she said to the students. "[L]inger. Look beneath the surface. Talk to strangers. Listen to what they have to say. Be flexible. Tear up your itinerary and take a different path if that one looks better. Keep your mind open."

Naryana Kocherlakota, the CLA economics professor who was recently appointed president of the Federal Reserve Bank, addressed May grads. Read more about Kocherlakota on in this issue of Reach.

Journalism strengthens communities--a fact celebrated annually with the Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism Awards. This year's awardees, named by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, were:

Star Tribune and staff, for a series on a young cancer patient and his mother who fled the state rather than undergo traditional cancer treatments

Bagley Farmer Independent and reporter-editor Tom Burford, B.A. '74, for a series on an elderly man arrested for the way he protected his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife

Star Tribune and reporters Glenn Howatt and Pam Louwagie, B.A. '95, for their "Deadly Falls" series on nursing homes

Rochester Post-Bulletin and Jay Furst, for their series, "Panhandlers: Are They Legit?"

Star Tribune and Doug Tice, for commentary, "It's easy to pounce on that political football"

At 10 years old, it's matured without aging a bit: the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program.

The program delivers on its promise to develop "the mind, body, voice, and spirit of the actor/artist/scholar." Many graduates--all still in their 20s--have already gone on to considerable success.

Santino Fontana as Hamlet and Leah Curney as Ophelia in the old Guthrie Theatre's closing productionPhoto by Michal Daniel

Among them are Santino Fontana, chosen after a coast-to-coast search to play Hamlet in the final production of the old Guthrie Theater. "I kept coming back to Santino," said Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling, "because he brought honesty, directness, an emotional palette that was remarkable and a vital intelligence to each audition we put him through."

Fontana also performed on Broadway in Brighton Beach Memoirs and A View From the Bridge. Other examples of student success include: Leah Curney as Ophelia, opposite Fontana's Hamlet; Namir Smallwood as Puck and Will Sturdivant as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and John Skelley portraying Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Guthrie.

Aya Cash appeared in Ethan Coen's Offices at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City and has had roles in various Law & Order TV episodes. Matthew Amendt, Will Sturdivant, Christine Weber, Hugh Kennedy, and Elizabeth Stahlmann are current or recent company members of the New York-based The Acting Company.

A group of students founded Shakespeare on the Cape, a summer festival on Cape Cod.

A partnership between CLA and the Guthrie, the program teaches students to perform texts of classical stature, and apply those skills to contemporary world repertoire and emerging dramatic forms--all this in the context of an outstanding liberal arts curriculum. Graduates emerge with a powerful career advantage in a profession legendary for its competitiveness.

The program attracts around 500 applicants each year, who audition at locations across the country.

National & International Awards

Mária Brewer and Daniel Brewer, French: named Chevaliers de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Education.

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, communication studies: National Communication Association's Diamond Anniversary Book Award, the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, and the Bruce E. Gronbeck Political Communication Research Award.

Nathan Kuncel, psychology: Cattell Early Career Research Award from the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and the Anne Anastasi Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions (Early Career) from the American Psychological Association.

Bernard Levinson, Classical and Near Eastern Studies: 2010-2011 Henry Luce Fellow of the National Humanities Center.

Jeff Simpson, psychology: Society of Personality and Social Psychology's 2010 Diener Award for Mid-Career Achievement in Social Psychology.

Morgan Thorson, dance: 2010 Guggenheim Fellow.

University Awards

Council of Graduate Students Outstanding Faculty Awardees:

Robert (Robin) Brown, cultural studies and comparative literature; Christopher Nappa, classical and Near Eastern studies; David Pellow, sociology; and Joe Soss, political science and Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Shannon Golden, sociology: Doctoral Fellowship for International Research from the Office of International Programs.

Kathleen Howard, English; and Andrew T. Urban, history: New Faculty Fellowship in English at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, by the American Council of Learned Societies, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Postscript: by Garrison Keillor
"I talked to these six students..." More

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=236543
236543

I landed at the University in September 1960, and stuck around through the spring of 1969, except for the year I dropped out to try to write a great American novel. (It set out to be anguished and introspective and got lost in the dark.) I was an English major and hung out in Vincent Hall, and the basement of Walter, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I spent a few years in the basement of Murphy, at the Ivory Tower, imitating E.B. White, and in Eddy Hall, imitating Edward R. Murrow.

I'm not nostalgic for those years, but when I think back, I realize what a privilege it was for a kid from Anoka to be at the U and take his sweet time trying on various personas—inscrutable aesthete, cool dude, prairie radical, billiards ace, worldly sophisticate, dangerous intellectual, Gopher hockey fan, mysterious loner, serious heartthrob, and making his way across the high plateau of education and into the gullies of adult life.

I wish for the current generation to have the same rousing time I had.

Some students then and now feel lost at the U, which is understandable, and some of them lose momentum due to bad habits, confusion, lack of sleep, poor choice of friends, poor choice of beverages, but the old alumnus knows that college is supposed to be an exhilarating time for a young man or young woman, a time of awakening and ephiphany, the discovery of one's unique capabilities and mission in life, a gathering-up of energy and ambition, a foretaste of sweet success.

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," says Scripture, "but time and chance happeneth to them all"—yes, yes, and some shining stars flame out and some promises are never kept, but the college years are meant to be happy—the slog through high school is done, the sharp elbows of professional rivalry are off in the distance—and that was why I went over to the Kafé 421 in Dinkytown to talk to six CLA students, high achievers all: to see if they are having as good a time as they should, and if not, why not.

Most stories you read about higher education have to do with funding cutbacks and budget cuts and tuition hikes and the dumbing down of the coursework, especially in the humanities—but this story isn't about that. It's about academic happiness. Young people divining the future.

DUSTIN CHACÓN is a cheerful red-haired guy, the son of Tony and Jodie, born in the Central Valley of California, raised in Rapid City, South Dakota, by his mother. A linguistics major, he's a senior majoring in linguistics, due to graduate in May. He's been accepted for grad school at University of Southern California and the University of Maryland and hasn't decided between them.

Dustin Chacón (second from right) and fellow scholarship students with Raja Davasish Roy (center), king of the Chakma tribe, at the royal palace in Rangamati, Bangladesh.Photo courtesy Dustin Chacón.

"I had an enjoyable time growing up a geek in Rapid City. We geeks drove around a lot and went to Walmart late at night, hung around, talked, and visited the all-night Safeway. And then they put in a Borders bookstore and that was a hot spot for the geeks. When I was 12, I saw a book in a bookstore, Learning Japanese, and I just decided I wanted to do it. I read all the books I could find, listened to tapes, and one day I went to a Japanese restaurant and spoke to the people behind the counter. They thought it was cute.

"In high school I had a friend who was second-generation Bangladeshi and I heard her talk in Bengali and it sounded musical, rhythmic. She taught me a little, and I ordered some books. Now it's one of my primary research interests, the structure of Bengali. I know Bengali speakers and they laugh when I speak Bengali to them--it's their family language and they're surprised that a white guy with red hair speaks it. It's impossible to extract a language from its cultural context, and I knew nothing about South Asia, but I've learned something about it since.

"I took four years of German in high school and borrowed a French textbook and tested into fourth-year French. I took three years of Hindi at the U, because the pop culture of South Asia is Hindi, but I haven't used my Hindi all that much.

"I think facility for language is just a matter of how much you enjoy it. It's a hobby of mine. When I started learning Japanese, it was like an abstract puzzle, but now that I'm studying the science of language, I am interested in the cognitive limitations of language and what languages have in common. The underlying blueprint.

"I took a psychology course in high school that mentioned Noam Chomsky and his theory of universal language and that got my interest. I read Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct, which turned out to be the text for introductory linguistics, all about the cognitive mechanisms of language. A fascinating book. I recommend it to everybody.

"As a freshman, I took Introduction to Linguistics, a class of 30 or so. I didn't know
a lot about what linguistics was but I fell in love with it. There was something elegant about describing language, which we do unself-consciously everyday, something so essential to being human.

"I've done a little work on the structure of Bengali and I'm also interested in psycho-linguistics and how the brain processes language, how neural disorders--Alzheimer's --affect language use, as the disease progresses, and in the long run to use these signs as a diagnostic tool, a predictor.

"Linguistics is a small program at the U, maybe 60 majors, maybe 20 grad students, and there are a lot of social activities. Linguistics Happy Hour and Linguistics Lunch, where the conversations are rarely about linguistics --we're all friends together--and it's been important to me to have this social contact and have friendships with professors and other students, so you're not just another face in a large program. I work hard and my rule is to have a sabbath, one day a week when I lie around and watch TV and eat bad food and decompress. Usually it's Saturday or Sunday. I do video games like Megamen or movies, horror or horror comedies, which are usually pretty horrible, or Bollywood.

"I spent this last summer, from June to early August, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on a State Department scholarship, and improved my Bengali massively. There were 15 of us Americans, and it was fantastic. We spent some time in the eastern part of the country, near the Burmese border, and lived with the Chakma tribe in a village of modern frame houses with thatched roofs, in the hills, surrounded by fields on slopes, and met with their king, a tall, slender man in his late 30s, English-educated, a lawyer in a suit, and we sat in his parlor and had tea and cookies. He was very personable. He talked about his people and his family and his life in London. Friendly chatter."

AARON MARKS is a tall guy (6'4") in black jeans and black sweater who, I am told, can stand and, leaning back, touch his forehead to the ground. It's part of his routine as the drum major of the University of Minnesota Marching Band. He grew up in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, the son of Michael and Polly, both musicians.

"I grew up in a musical family so I picked up violin and piano, and then clarinet in middle school. I was a parochial kid, Holy Family parish school, and my parents switched me to the public high school, 2,400 kids, because they saw more opportunities for me there.

"I played bass clarinet and then picked up the mellophone because they needed a brass player. It's the marching band equivalent of the French horn. It looks like a big trumpet with a larger bell. It was a challenge but I stuck with it.

"Marching band was so much fun and had such camaraderie and I was attracted to the U by the great marching band. And the Cities were a big draw. I came here with my dad once when I was 11 and we went to the Saint Paul City Hall to see the revolving onyx Indian, 38 feet high. My original goal was to study music education and I got into marching band the first year. We accept everyone, whether you've played an instrument before or not: if you're willing to put in the time, we're willing to teach you.

"There are around 310 students in marching band. It's a commitment. It takes about 500 hours for the season. We meet Monday through Thursday, 4:15 to 6. And on Friday on game weeks. On Saturday, we spend all day. An 11 a.m. kickoff means the band starts at 6 a.m. We march around silently on the field for half an hour with one drummer hitting cadence and then start playing until 8:30 or 9. Breakfast and then we dress. There's inspection. Then everyone is on their own until 10 a.m. I eat a bagel or something and sit down and think through the routine. I put on my white pants, which are tight, form-fitting, and black spats, knee-high, and white jacket with a maroon overlay, with a secret key sewn into it, a key to the gate of Northrop Field, the old football field and drill field that predated Memorial Stadium, It means a lot to me as a symbol of the history of the band and the U. And then the hat and plume finish it off.

"The halftime show is seven or eight minutes long and changes every week. The pregame is 18 minutes long, the most intricate in the country and most of it is unscripted. You get a chart that says you start here and go there, but the path you take is sort of an oral tradition. I've never had a major catastrophe on the field but I think about it--an injury, for example, or the directors missing.

With Garrison KeillorPhoto by Kelly MacWilliams

"Marching band is a social activity, and we need to be able to correct each other and remind each other--we're putting a lot of time in, let's put on a good show. Drum majoring has taught me to prepare mentally and physically, and that in the moment you need to be ready to do what's best. You have to learn everyone's name and where they're from and their major, so that they know we're all working together for the same thing, and I'm not just pushing them around. You have to memorize the music and the drill. You have to be ready to laugh at yourself. The most well-scripted routine will sometimes give rise to comedy. Funny things will happen.

"We have four home games in a row next season, four different shows to learn in four weeks. Drum majoring has provided opportunities I never could have imagined. I got to sing the national anthem with my mom and dad at the Dome for the last Gopher football game. We sang it in three-part harmony in front of 60,000 people. You can't hear yourself so you just watch the conductor lead the band. Singing in the new stadium is a wild ride. You get your pitch before you walk out and when the drum roll starts, you go.

You have to sing a measure ahead and the conductor tries to time the band with your voice coming out of the speakers, and you hold the big fermatas as long as you want to, and it helps to wear earplugs. Otherwise you sing the first line and then you hear the first line sung by yourself as you're singing the second. The band plays it in B-flat, and the top note is an F, which is tough for a baritone.

"The driving force for me is my passion for marching band, the history of the band, the people in band, the marching in intense heat or pouring rain, sitting on the bus for three hours to go march in the rain, everyone working toward one thing. We're maybe five percent music majors, and we have English majors, business, computer science, and all these people of different perspectives and political persuasions come together to perform a show.

"The drum major has to be in the moment--you've got to give the beat so the tubas stay with the drums though they may not hear them. You make up your own show, but the goalpost toss--tossing the baton over the goalpost and catching it--is a tradition that goes back 80 years.

"I am the 59th drum major in the history of the U and the first to march in the new stadium. We marched and saw all these Minnesotans all jacked-up, so much enthusiasm, people clapping and screaming and little kids giving you the high-fives and fist bumps. You're part of something that's bigger than yourself. It was here before, it'll be here after. We stand in front of the student section, down by the goalposts, looking up at all those students, and they have such emotional passion to give and when the band starts to play, the student section erupts. It's an out of body experience.

"The last couple of weeks, I've added a major in political science, and I've gotten more interested in leadership. I'm sure I'll stay involved with music but I may look for some leadership opportunities. I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet, but I know this opportunity has helped me gain incredibly valuable leadership experience."

ANGELA MERRITT is a Saint Paul girl, dark-haired, gentle, soft-spoken, but very clear about things. She doesn't search for words or beat around the bush. She's the daughter of Fred and Rosemary and grew up near Como Park, riding her bike around the lake and visiting the Conservatory where, especially in winter, she got a strong sense that "everything would be okay."

"I went to Saint Paul Central High School, which offered a child-care services class with an in-house day care with 20 to 25 kids at any particular time, and that piqued my interest in working with children. I thought it was wild that my school offered child care. Now, looking back, I can see that I was always interested. So I set out to become a pre-school teacher.

"I went to a tech college in Eau Claire to get a teaching certificate and I taught in preschools for a few years. I love teaching. I have a caregiver sense about me but more than that I have a fascination with children and how they learn language, and math problems, and why some kids are so much faster than others. Kids from rough backgrounds, how they compare with their peers. You see everything when you work in pre-school. But I knew I wanted more. Pre-school teaching is fascinating, but it's thankless work, high stress, and the pay is no good. Nobody does it forever.

"So I went to the University of Wisconsin - Rice Lake, a small town, so friendly and it was great to be in that atmosphere.

"And then I decided to come home to the U of M. I had always imagined that I would go here. It felt like home, the Gophers and all that. I had an apartment in Saint Paul with a roommate, and rode the bus from Como Park to the U. I went in the child psychology program, which was very lucky for me, a small program and I was an honors student so the classes were smaller and there was more contact with professors. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the work I have to do, but the other day I was organizing computer files and read over some of my old papers, and it reminded me of why I was so excited about college. To write about new things and get comments back and to take literature classes as a break from reading science--classes like The Nature of Good and Evil, and Sexuality and Culture.

"I'm a morning person. I make lists and take notes, I form study groups--'Hey ladies, there's a test next week, let's get together and study'--we meet in the library or someone's house. I study at a café or at home or in the library; I move around. I always eat breakfast. Three meals a day. I don't believe in staying up all night. I get eight hours of sleep, seven or nine just doesn't work out for me.

"I had been at the U for two years and a student came into class talking about this exchange program in Berlin. I'd always wanted to study abroad but I come from a family with not much money and I was 26, older than most other students, and I thought I should graduate and get it over with and go to work or start grad school.

"But I applied, and I got an interview, a cold day in January, 11 people sitting behind a table in the Social Science Tower. I was very nervous, big-time stress. I knew they were going to ask me a question in German. I had taken two years of German at the U--my grandmother was German, second-generation, Delores Love, she lived in Saint Paul, near Saint Bernard's Church--but I was afraid of the German Question. Which was: "What do you do in your free time?" I stuttered. I said, "Could you please repeat the question?" I said something about cooking and going rock climbing and doing yoga. At the end, I walked out of the room thinking, 'At least you tried and they're having a good laugh.'

"Three hours later, they called up and said, 'We're supposed to notify you by mail but we wanted to tell you that you got the scholarship.' It was a year at the Freie Universität (Free University) of Berlin. I thought, 'This is really scary. I might not even do it. I don't have to go.' But in the end, I went.

"I flew to Newark, then to Berlin and was met by a friend from German class at the U. Found an apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, which somebody told me was a cool place to be, in the old East Berlin, in old apartment buildings where, after the Wall came down, squatters lived who had then become more legal and most of them were still around, artists, musicians, classic lefties, bohemians, some young families with kids. Artists, musicians. The Free University is 45 minutes away by U-Bahn, the subway, which I rode three times a week to class.

"I decided to jump right in and look for an internship at a research institute and I sent emails to the Max Planck Institute which responded with discouraging comments, and I kept at it, and got an interview, and got the internship. They were doing cognitive research and I thought I'd just help out, but they sat me down and made me a junior researcher. I felt like a fish out of water and knew I had gotten myself into a bigger thing than I'd counted on. It was like learning to ride a bike. I did a project with adults, comparing older with college-age in working memory and categorization tasks, studying the possible adaptive effects of aging.

"Being in a foreign country and learning the language was something I thought I'd never be able to do. But I gave a presentation in German about cognitive modeling and answered questions. And I met a man and fell in love. Speaking with his German family was a high point of my fluency, so that I felt they really 'got' me. Though in German I was shyer, less sure, and a lot more polite. I couldn't make sarcastic remarks in German. He and I are still together.

"I'll go over to Berlin this summer and he'll come visit here. I'll do an internship at an elementary school this summer, and begin a master's in educational psychology in Berlin in the fall."

THUY NGUYEN-TRAN is a slender, clear-eyed young woman with gold-rimmed glasses who talks very fast in complete sentences and complete paragraphs, too. Thuy [pronounced Twee] sat down in jeans, black boots, and a blue sweater, and looked me straight in the eye. She listens to a question and before I'm halfway through it, I can see her framing her answer. She lives in Richfield with her parents and rides the bus to the U (100 dollars per semester) and she will enter medical school in the fall.

"My parents were law students in Saigon and emigrated in 1984, escaping by boat to a camp in Malaysia. My aunt in Los Angles sponsored them to come to America and they moved to Minneapolis in 1988 when I was born. Both of them went to the U, my dad in economics, my mom in French, and my dad became a stay-at-home dad so my mom could take a job at the U library. They had four kids and we all grew up in a bilingual home. My sister and I started a traditional Vietnamese dance group, girls four to 21, some of them adopted, and our family works every summer at Vietnamese camp at St. Olaf, which is for adoptees, 150 kids every summer, to learn about where they came from.

"I was in kindergarten when I knew I'd go into science. We had a little pencil box science kit and you took it home and did the activities--make a volcano with vinegar and baking soda, for example--and it was fun and I got to do it with my parents. I developed a passion for health care as well, thanks to my parents, and I volunteered at a hospital and did a program called Health Career Investigators and got to tour hospitals and learn about the field.

"We have relatives in Vietnam, Japan, New York, New Jersey, Canada, California, and Texas. I want to go back to Vietnam to see where my parents grew up, in the center of Saigon. I wanted to go this summer but my classes start in early August. The U has a flex M.D. program so maybe I could go to Vietnam as an educational experience, hopefully within the next couple years.
"It was logical and comfortable to come to the U, which was familiar to me. I started taking U classes my junior year in high school, a lot of science, biology, history, English, so I started here as a freshman with 50 credits--I had sophomore standing--but I decided to do the full four years because there were a lot of courses I wanted to take.

"My classes were mostly on the East Bank, including a hands-on biology class, with lots of lab work, and a great professor, Jane Phillips, a very approachable person who gave me my first job working in a lab. Through CLA I engaged in service learning courses, the Community Scholars Program, and pursued a minor in leadership. An interesting concept that definitely changed me. In Vietnamese culture, there's more focus on community, being reserved, respectful, so I needed to learn to be a leader by helping others find their own strengths and skills. Empowering others through education.

"I'm happiest when I'm doing something hands-on and something unknown, like a research project I'm doing now about DPC--DNA protein crosslinks--certain chemicals that cause a protein to link onto DNA and interfere with cellular processes which could lead to cell damage or cell death, so the big picture is learning how to create these DPCs and observe their effects on cells and someday create anti-cancer drugs. You work in the lab with little beakers and pipettes, you make a hypothesis but you're not sure it'll turn out. Inevitably, you have setbacks and little failures along the way, but each time you give it a go, you troubleshoot and try to eliminate your mistakes, and it's really exciting when you solve problems and eliminate them. And it's exciting when you succeed. The Aha! moment. It doesn't happen so often and so it means more to you.

"I'm going to medical school this fall. I enjoy research but I want to do more public health and work directly with people, especially with underserved communities, such as immigrant populations. These people have tremendous language barriers and cultural barriers.

"When I was a little girl, my parents made up stories about a girl who rode around on a magical turtle named Mimi and did good deeds, putting out forest fires, helping an old woman clean her house, giving back to the community, doing good for others. My parents taught me discipline. They were students and studied hard at the kitchen table and I watched them and I sat and scribbled on a pad.

"So I study hard. I was brought up to. I get up at six and go to campus and study for an hour or two and answer e-mails. I'm willing to work on weekends and not go out to parties. I'm in class until 5 or 5:30. I'm taking anatomy now and a nonprofit management class, and one in leadership. And I have meetings during the day. I work for a program called Minnesota's Future Doctors which is to help minority and rural students gain the skills to become competitive applicants to med school.

"So this is the plan. Four years of med school, then four years' residency in pediatrics. I'll be 29 and I want to be here in the Twin Cities, working in the Vietnamese community, trying to bridge the generations, old and young, keeping the old culture and teaching American values."

JASMINE OMOROGBE [aw mer AW bee--the g is silent] is a first-generation African-American, her father, Benjamin, born in Benin City, Nigeria, and her mother, Jariland Spence, from Lafayette, Alabama. Jasmine grew up in Minneapolis's North Side ("a big stigma, lots of stereotypes about crime, but I never had any problems there. You have to be mindful, that's all.") and I can't imagine she ever had any problems with anything or anyone: she is a powerhouse. She talks fast, has a big beautiful smile, a young black woman with kinky twist extensions in her hair, who tells you her story without decoration. Father was an orphan who came to this country to go to law school in Louisiana. She is a communications major who hopes to be a corporate recruiter and a motivational speaker and open a nonprofit, maybe work with minority students to prepare them for college.

" 'Education is the great equalizer,' my dad liked to tell his children. My parents raised me in a culture of education and learning. We read books together. Everyday happenings turned into teachable moments.

Jasmine Omorogbe with KeillorPhoto by Kelly MacWilliams

"I had a great time at Patrick Henry High School. I love school. PH was predominantly people of color. So it wasn't an issue. I dove in and got in the college preparatory program. In my family, not going to college just wasn't an option. I never had a rebellious phase. I was primarily raised by my mother who was pushing me, challenging me, and praising me. When I was in 10th grade, a University student group called Voices Merging came to my high school, six of them, white, African American, Latino, and they did a spoken word performance about the power of words to create social change. I wanted to be a part of that group and that really moved me toward coming to the U. I joined Voices Merging and now I'm president of the group.

"I was thinking of elementary education at the time, but I don't have the patience to be a teacher in the trenches all day. And I'm not a math person so I knew that IT wasn't for me. I settled on communications and got in the honors program, where my advisor is Mary Moga, who's the best person on earth, and she keeps me on track. I'll graduate summa cum laude in the spring. Some people look at me and assume that I'm here because of affirmative action, because the U needed to fill a quota, but my GPA from Patrick Henry was 3.9. So I earned the right to come.

"I live on the East Bank, in Yudof Hall, and I've got a lot of work to do so time management is the important thing. I work for the Career & Community Learning Center and the Office of Admissions, and I coordinate the multicultural kickoff where the minority students come for a couple of days before fall semester. And I'm very involved in Voices Merging. It's been a high point of my U career. We put on an open mic show on campus every other Monday. Four hundred people. It's magic. High energy. Every open mic has a theme, something about social change. You can rap, or sing, or speak, and we have a DJ who plays in between people. Two hours, 8 to 10 p.m. Each person gets five minutes. People put their names in a bucket and we draw 20 or so. We don't censor. Sometimes people just come and read out of the Bible or somebody says 'I don't believe in Christianity,' but it sparks discussion.

"My honors project was about using hip hop in the classroom to teach English and poetry--some of the poetic concepts in hip hop rhythms are the same as Shakespeare's.

"Hip hop culture includes graffiti, rapping or emceeing, the breakdance, and DJ turntableism. Now it's expanded to fashion, journalism, so forth. Hip hop came from Jamaica and the Bronx, and it's all about expressing the frustration of black people and telling the truth. (But you can't sad breakdance.) Some people think it's just gangsta rap and all about guns and money and referring to women as bitches or hos, but that's just done for commercial success, that's not what true hip hop is all about. The true artists are underground. It's sad. These white suburban kids are drawn to gagsta rap as a vicarious thing, but it's ridiculous. All about the 'hood. To me, misogynism is not inherent in hip hop, and it's not all right. We have a good hip hop scene in Minnesota. Brother Ali. Heiruspecs, Atmosphere, The Blend, Toki Wright, Mike Dreams, Carnage. And Voices Merging is hosting a hip hop conference at the U April 9 to 11 called From Vices to Verses: A New Era in Hip Hop and Action--hip hop is a tool for good, and we need to use it."

DAVE RAILE [pronounced RAY-lee] is a tall, lean guy with short, cropped hair who grew up on the south side of Edina and attended Saint Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, the youngest of three children of Geoffrey and Cheryl. His dad is a radiologist, his mom is a prenatal nurse at Abbott. Dave talks in a deliberate way, but he brightens up when we start talking about boxing.

David Raile (left) interning as a medical assistant in EcuadorPhoto courtesy of Dave Raile

"I got into boxing when I was a junior in high school. I was at a crossroads, I was unhappy, things not going my way. I had a big mouth and talked a lot and got into trouble and boxing was a good way to get out negative energy and unhappiness. And anger. Hey, I wanted to beat up my big brother. I saw the Rocky movies, many times, all six of them, and I think they're great for what they are. My dad understood and he helped me find a trainer in Eden Prairie who had boxed for years. He trained me for a year with 14-ounce gloves and then I went to a trainer in South Minneapolis at Elite Boxing. It was great. I got to meet people. I never had any issue with minorities or people unlike myself. Boxing has mellowed me out. I don't have a big mouth anymore.

"I started out at the University of Denver. I was never enamored of the idea of going away to school but my sister went there and I visited it over a weekend and didn't dislike it, so I said, Okay, fine. Freshman year I had a 4.0 average but from day one, it didn't feel like the right place. One night, Denver was playing the Gophers in hockey and I cheered for the Gophers and my friends said, 'Why don't you go to Minnesota if you love it so much?' And I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to apply to the U. Got wait-listed and was accepted on July 1 and I couldn't have been happier. Both my parents went to the U. I love everything about the place. I feel it's always run in my blood, the state and everything. It was an easy decision.

"I didn't want to study science or math. I knew I didn't want to go into medicine. The classes that interested me were ancient philosophy, psychology, political science, history, and so on.

"I lived off-campus in Stadium Village, and now I live in Dinkytown. I'm pretty organized in a disorganized way and know where everything is in my room even if it doesn't look like it. Within the first couple weeks I joined the water skiing team. A club team, so we get no money from the U. Slalom is my event: you ski through an entrance gate and around six buoys and an exit gate. The boat drives up the middle and you have to maneuver around them. It takes 16 seconds at 36 miles per hour and you're on a 60-foot rope and every time you complete one pass, they shorten the rope to 53, then to 43.

"And then, my sophomore year, I took a biology lab course, Biology and the Evolution of Sex, which took me by surprise, a couple hundred students, a great teacher, a great lab T.A. And it clicked in me that I wanted to go into medicine. There never had been any pressure from my parents, but I just knew that medicine was what would make me happiest. I always had this innate instinct as a kid to diagnose people. Once in ninth grade I was playing football with a friend and the ball hit him in the hand and he was shaking it and I grabbed his hand and felt around the bones and told him I thought it was broken and to go get an X-ray. Once my sister was lying on the couch, her stomach hurt, and I told her she had appendicitis, and she woke up at 4 a.m. and had to be rushed into surgery.

"I took an EMT course last semester, and passed the test last week. It was all hands-on. Did everything from managing airways to controlling bleeding, controlling shock, dealing with special needs patients, young children, infants, geriatrics. Trauma management. Diabetic emergencies. Behavioral emergencies, overdoses and so forth.

"Last spring I spent three months in Ecuador doing a public health internship through the Minnesota Studies in International Development program.

David Raile at Macchu Piccu, "the Lost City of the Incas," in the Peruvian junglePhoto courtesy of Dave Raile

"It was seven weeks in Quito and then an internship in a town six hours southeast of Quito on the edge of the Amazon jungle. It was mind-blowing. Quito is industrialized and urbanized and the town is not: hot, humid, pouring rain, dirt roads, meat markets with the fresh slaughtered carcasses hanging up. I lived with a family--my mother worked at the hospital where I did my internship, my dad ran a tourist business taking people whitewater rafting. Two sisters, 23 and 25, both with little kids. The house was simple, one-story, concrete, and I slept in a room off the kitchen, a barred window looking right onto a busy street. I slept very little. I was a medical assistant at the hospital, learned how to start IVs, draw blood, take vital signs, give shots. Their number-one cause of death was pneumonia. Malnutrition was the contributing cause to most of their health problem. Low protein, a lot of starch.

"This semester I'll be done with the prereqs and this summer I'll take the MCAT and apply to medical schools and the U of M is my first choice.

"Time management is my big challenge. There's always things you'd rather be doing. I'm a creature of habit. I get my schedule down and know what I'm doing every day. I get up at seven. I don't sleep much compared to my roommates. I work out at the rec center. Lift weights, cardio--I spend a lot of time in the library and with my girlfriend and friends."

I talked to the six students individually for an hour or so, asked open-ended questions, scribbled down their answers as best I could. Each of them struck me as straightforward, unabashed, unselfconscious, talking to me as equals, making eye contact--none of that eye-rolling and smirking and mumbling and slouchiness that you see in some young people and that drives the old alumnus nuts. And each of them is capable of self-discipline, turning off the immediate gratification in favor of working toward the long-term reward.

And then there was the energy. The surge of energy when they sat down next to me and got to talking. It was inspiring to meet them. It's good to talk to people in their early twenties. You learn that weariness and disillusionment and despair are luxuries. You've got to keep going back to basics. I left Dinkytown and drove home to Saint Paul, resolved to quit fruiting around and try to focus and work harder and make my time count for something. I'm hopeful about that.

29608|29840
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:50:00 -0600Bound to Please

Read reviews of books and other creations by CLA faculty, staff, and alumni

What the Poem Wants

Michael Dennis Browne

Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009 / Reading this small book is like sitting down with Browne over a cup of tea to chat about poetry. It is warm, simply and generously written. In short chapters, Browne brings the reader into his own writer's life, a world of colleagues and influences—who include Minnesota's John Berryman and James Wright—and considerations of music and poetry, walking, failure, duty, hope...so the book isn't just about poetry, but about a man who's lived and thought a lot about it. -MP

Professor Browne has taught English at the University since 1973 and has written several books of poetry. He retired in April.

Purge

Nicole Johns

SEAL PRESS, 2009 / Eating disorders are on the rise (they affect an estimated 10 to 15 percent of female college students), and have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. In a brave, raw account of months away from the U of M at a Wisconsin eating disorder clinic, Nicole Johns describes the relentless reach of the disease into every corner of its victims' lives—producing loss of control, panic, self-loathing and bizarre body image, guilt, shame, anger, heart problems, seizures, kidney failure. "I am at war with my body," she writes; in the course of her story the reader gradually comes to understand just how massive is the war and how desperate the struggle. -MP

Nicole Johns, M.F.A. '06, received her master's of fine arts degree in creative writing from CLA's English department. Purge is a finalist for ForeWord Review's Book of the Year Award.

Cool Auditor

Ray Gonzales

Boa Editions, Ltd., 2009 / Maybe this book of prose poems should be a Spike Jonze movie called Being Ray Gonzalez. Adventuring into Gonzalez's insurgent imagination can give you the wild and surreal feeling that he is recalling dreams you haven't yet had. Some pieces are humorous, like the riffs on research in "Findings (1)" and "Findings (2)"; others, like "Scratch," are breathtakingly existential. -MP

Gonzalez is a professor in the Creative Writing Program. He has written numerous books of poetry, non-fiction and fiction, is poetry editor for The Bloomsbury Review, and founding editor of the poetry journal LUNA.

Happy: a Memoir Fancy Beasts

Alex Lemon

Milkweed Editions, 2010 / If you simply describe the story line of Alex Lemon's memoir, Happy, you do it a disservice. Yes, he describes a time in his life when he overcame a life-threatening malfunction near his brain stem. But this is no ordinary account and Lemon is no ordinary writer.

The corporeal quality of his language thrusts you into his world. Lemon is also a poet and uses his poetic sensuality to help us feel his evolving emotions—the denial of his vulnerability, his fear of loss, anger at his situation, and the shame that anger brings. This is more than a story of overcoming the odds.

SCRIBNER, 2010 /Fancy Beasts is Lemon's newest collection of poetry. Reading Fancy Beasts on the tails (no pun intended) of Happy has been a wonderful entry into Lemon's poems. Again, his language is corporeal and the imagery is jagged and harsh and yet funny as he pokes fun at American culture: "And when the piano drops on you, it's like wow, this is all/There is? Plop, plop—fizz fizz." Another poem is titled, "My Fallow Human Beans." I know I'm enjoying poems when I set the book down, sigh in satisfaction, and pick up the book to read it again. I read, I laughed, I sighed, I read again. -CW

Lemon, M.F.A. '04, teaches at Texas Christian University and co-edits the journal LUNA with U of M English professor Ray Gonzalez.

The Grass

Paul Zerby

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., 2009 / We'd like to think the U has always been a bastion of reason and fairness, but according to Paul Zerby, that was not the case when he was a student here in the era of Joe McCarthy. Zerby's coming-of-age novel is driven in part by a fictionalized account of real-life philosophy instructor Forrest O. Wiggins, a socialist and the U's first black professor. University President James Morrill's decision to dismiss Wiggins was protested by CLA Dean Charles Conger, Wiggins's colleagues in the philosophy department (who wanted to give him tenure), and thousands of students who claimed the action was racist and a violation of academic freedom. The New York Times reported that Wiggins, vice-chair of the Minnesota Progressive Party, believed Morrill was bending to legislative pressure.

The novel is principally about the madness of war—in this case the Korean War, and, well, testosterone. The Grass was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize for fiction in support of social change, which is founded and funded by Barbara Kingsolver. -MP

Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

By Karen Ho

Karen Ho is an associate professor of anthropology in CLAPhoto by Patrick O'Leary

Duke University Press, 2009 / Was the Great Recession predictable? Absolutely, says Karen Ho, who spent a year on Wall Street working as a financial analyst--and returned for another two as an anthropologist.

Anthropology may bring to mind archaeological digs or the recording of exotic mating dances, but for Ho, an associate professor in CLA, it means studying the high-profile but poorly understood world of American investment banking.

She finds it, in the words of one of her research subjects, "all about today and--whether you can make money today and if you can't make money today, you are out of there"-- an understanding that investment bankers and traders often project onto the rest of the world. That attitude, she says, gave rise to the fast-buck, first-quarter culture largely responsible for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

In eye-opening detail, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, describes how the behavior patterns Ho saw first-hand came to be writ large as an economic bubble that burst disastrously, dismantling vast enterprises and putting millions out of work.

Financial incentives in this highly competitive industry are enormous and reward those who cut the most deals in the least time. The message to workers, according to Ho, is: don't dally, don't think too hard, don't be influenced by ultimate impact. Move now--tomorrow you may be unemployed.

For many privileged and highly networked Wall Streeters, graduates of top universities too young to have experienced the world, she says, it may not be particularly traumatic to be laid off from a job that pays a cool half million, knowing they will be picked up soon enough on the upswing of this churning industry. It is, however, problematic when they mistakenly assume other workers are also only passingly affected by job insecurity and the "performance enhancing" practices that cause it--quick turn-arounds, short-selling, and restructuring. That misconception, Ho says, sets a stage where these whiz-kids can become less capable of understanding the suffering of others.

"In such a context," she writes, "ﬁnancial crashes and busts are not natural cycles but, rather, are constructed out of everyday practices and ideologies: the strategies of the boom set the stage for the bust." -MP

Kwanzaa: Black Power and the Making of the African-American Holiday Tradition

Keith Mayes

ROUTLEDGE, 2009 / This is the first scholarly book to look at black holiday traditions as part of a greater cultural movement. Kwanzaa, Professor Mayes says, resulted from the "calendar politics" of the Black Power movement of the 1960s, where black people created their own holidays to express their unique experiences, culture, and aesthetics within the larger national context. -KO

Mayes is an associate professor in the Department of African American
and African Studies.

Further on, Nothing

Michal Kobialka
University of Minnesota Press, 2009 / You may think "avant-garde" simply means "ahead of the crowd." If so, this volume of Michal Kobialka's essays and the writings of Tadeusz Kantor which they introduce and interpret will correct that notion. Kantor (1915-1990), the avant-garde Polish theater artist (also painter, writer, creator of "happenings" and theorist), peeled back words and images in order to look straight into reality. What is reality, he asked in his plays and notebooks. What is its relationship to art? What is death and what is memory? How can erasure make reality visible? Kobialka provides perspectives for understanding Kantor's deeply philosophical writings about theater, which are as enigmatic and as penetrating as Zen koans. -MP

Professor Kolbialka has taught in CLA's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance since 1988. He is member of the editorial board of the new journal, Polish Theatre Perspectives.

Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance

Monika Žagar

University of Washington Press, 2009 / Even Norway's Queen Sonja remarked, as she kicked off author Knut Hamsun's 150th birthday celebration last year, "I think we'll have to keep two thoughts [about him] in our head at the same time." Monika Žagar explains why, as she traces the Nazi sympathies of this Nobel Prize-winning literary giant back to his belief in a racial hierarchy, an idealized Norwegian rural life and "woman tamed in marriage." -MP

To be Certain of the Dawn (CD)

Stephen Paulus, composer; Michael Dennis Browne, librettist

BIS, 2009 / In this memorial oratorio, massed orchestra and choirs conjure the enormity of the Holocaust and solo voices lament personal tragedy. Paulus and Browne were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for this collaboration, recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Osmo Vänskä. It was part of an interfaith project of the Basilica of St. Mary and Temple Israel in Minneapolis. -MP

Paulus, B.A. '71, M.A. '76, Ph.D. '78, is a composer for orchestra, chorus, opera, and other genres. He is the founder of the American Composers Forum.

How can communities support local art and artists? Alumnus Jeff Hnilicka leads the way, taking a page from the sustainable food movement.

By Danny LaChance

http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/allreach.php?entry=236568
236568

It was three years after Hurricane Katrina had mercilessly raked New Orleans's lower ninth ward into the sea. Jeff Hnilicka, an arts administrator visiting from New York, happened to be strolling through the neighborhood. He was moved by what he saw.

Generations of a family displaced by the disaster, and their neighbors, were preparing to celebrate a life-sized artwork by local artist Wangechi Mutu, Mrs. Sarah's House, commemorating the loss they suffered when their home was destroyed by Katrina. "There was food and singing and dancing and crying and sharing stories," he recalls.

Jeff Hnilicka says it feels "oddly subversive" to present artists grant money in a canvas bag. But maybe that's how one feels, starting a national movement.Photo by Kelly MacWilliams

But what struck him was how this piece of art, which was part of the international Prospect.1 New Orleans Biennial, was helping the community to rebuild itself. He thought, "This is what I want my life to be about"--making contemporary art accessible where it is most effective--in the community.

In some ways, the revelation wasn't new. After all, following his graduation from the University in 2004 with a B.A. in theater arts, Hnilicka had launched his career as manager of visitor services at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center, where he was responsible for removing the physical and psychological obstacles encountered by visitors. But the New Orleans experience reinforced his appreciation of how powerful art can be when removed from the literal and figurative walls of museums.

He returned to New York reenergized, and with members of the Hit Factorie art collaborative began to brainstorm about how to produce art that would appeal to all the members of a community--not just arts professionals, and would be displayed where people actually live--not